Takamachi Nanoha of 2814: LeaguerS
by Shadow Crystal Mage
Summary: Takamachi Nanoha, chosen Green Lantern of Sector 2814 (oh, and some ferret boy too)! When great evil descends, she must stand with the might of the world to hold it back. Superman! The Flash! Hawkgirl! Some Magical Girl Princess! A Guy From Space! The kid who turns into a ferret! And a man dressed as an echo-locating flying mammal! They are… the Justice LeaguerS! A Megacrossover.
1. Prologue: Ordinary Days

A/N: Aaaaaaaand we're back! Magical Girl Lyrical Green Lantern-chan Nanoha of 2814… begins again!

...

In case you saw this first, this is a sequel to _**Takamachi Nanoha of 2814**._

I'd really recommend you read **_Takamachi Nanoha of 2814_,** the series that came before this, but if you insist on reading this first, than here are the key points you should know: Nanoha became a Green Lantern before she got Raging Heart. Thus, she managed to solve the Precia case without the latter dying. Later, she meets with other assorted magical girls, wizards and magi, and together they had to sort through the book of Darkness case, eventually forming the United Magical Girl Association. At around the same time, the 5th Holy Grail War happened, which was a bitch for magical Girl Prisma Illya and her family. After defeating the corrupted Defense Program, Sailor Mercury and Hasegawa Chisame of Ala Alba were able to use their skills to help save the life of Reinforce. Then Kinomoto Sakura Sealed the 53rd Card, resulting in her harnessing the power of Hope and eventually forging her own Power Ring. Afterwards they had to deal with the Materials and the awakening of the Unbreakable Dark, who was promptly Befriended with no need for silly time-travel shenanigans. Plus lots of other subplots happened.

And so here we are. Still confused? Well, what do you expect would happen when you try to summarize 3 whole fanfics into one paragraph? Why don't you just read **_Takamachi Nanoha of 2814_ **to find out how it all happens.

No? Well, I warned you. Good luck trying to make sense of the story. You realize this is like trying to figure out the Nanoha 1st movie by reading Force, right?

Happens about 2 weeks after **_Kinomoto Sakura of 2814_**, and about six months after _**Takamachi **_** _Nanoha of 2814._**

In case you haven't heard, I'm writing an original fiction book. Link is in my profile, as ffnet doesn't allow copy pasting anymore. Still, if you find this not to be an obstacle: smashwords com/books / view/380166

…

Takamachi Nanoha of 2814: LeaguerS

by Shadow Crystal Mage

Prologue: Ordinary Days

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story. If I did… well, this would all be canon. WARNING: MAY CAUSE HEAD EXPLOSION!

…

_**Gears of Destiny Aftermath**_

Yuri Eberwein, the Sovereign of the Purple Sky, Unbreakable Dark, really cute loli— as that Black Archer girl had kept calling her— sat awkwardly in the Yagami living room. She was a bit disconcerted at how quickly she had seemingly been accepted by these warriors, these "Mahou Shoujo", as one of them after she had been defeated and her destructive impulses suppressed. Well, perhaps not one of them, but they were being very friendly towards her. A bit… _too_ friendly, in some instances. The one wearing the apron had asked her to pose naked, and the Black Archer girl had tried to kiss her, which was why Yuri remembered the name. Both had been firmly… _chastised_ by her King. Dearche had been quite emphatic, almost unleashing her Unlimited Blade Works spell before Yuri had gotten her to stand down. Even with _that_, nothing had happened. The two had merely laughed the violence off, and onlookers had looked amused. A few even looked approving. These Mahou Shoujo were confusing.

Levi was sulking, having been forbidden candy since it would supposedly ruin her appetite for dinner. Yuri doubted that. The Slasher was very enthusiastic about food. One of her host's knights, the lady Shamal, was trying to entertain Levi, and most likely keep her from playing with her lightning spells. They'd all most likely survive if she set off, say, Thousand Bolts, but the same couldn't be said for everyone else in the neighborhood. Stern, her purple visor raised, was quietly reading a book their host had leant her, something about a world on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle. The Material of Wisdom frowned every so often in confusion. Perhaps it was too esoteric?

"Dinner's almost ready!" their host, the Queen of the Night Sky, called from the kitchen, voice cheerful. This world was so confusing. A Queen working in the kitchen while her knights lay about and relaxed? What next, men in combat? Although… she recalled there actually HAD been males in the battle that had led to her defeat. What a strange world.

"About time!" Dearche said, somehow managing to simultaneously lounge and stand tall at the same time. She pointed at the kitchen. "Your paltry cooking had better be worthy of our palate, lame one!"

That finally drew a reaction, in the form of glares from some of their host's knights. Yuri tensed, wondering if this was considered a breach of hospitality, or–

"Ah!" came from the kitchen. Yuri could almost image the little heart at the end of that syllable. "Well, if the King doesn't like the food, then I won't force her to eat it. Perhaps Levi-chan would like the extra food…"

"All right! Extra food!" the Material of Power cheered. "I'll take it!"

"We didn't say that!" Dearche protested, looking alarmed at the possibility of not getting to eat. "We didn't say we wouldn't eat!"

Hayate stuck her head out of the kitchen. "Oh, no!" she said, waving a hand. "I wouldn't dream of forcing King-chan to eat food not to her tastes. Really, I'll just give it to Levi-chan…"

"Yay!"

"Fine, we'll eat your swill, damn it!"

"Ah, how nice to hear the king consider my food worthy of eating," Hayate gushed, before briefly meeting Yuri's eye and winking. Yuri suppressed a giggle as Hayate ducked back into the kitchen on small wings of magic, legs hanging near-useless as she floated over the floor.

Vita leaned towards Shamal, eyeing Dearche. "We _sure_ she doesn't have any Gilgamesh data in her? It might have come in from the Kotomine stuff…"

Yes, such a strange world. Still, she felt she could like it here…

…

_**Our Noble Heroine**_

Takamachi Nanoha, Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814, wanted to pant, her heart pounding. Her arms ached, and the muscles of her body were stretched and sore in ways she hadn't known it was possible to be in agony in. She repressed the urge to moan in pain.

Still, she continued with the forms Miyuki had taught her, drilling the moves into her muscles as she stepped and swung, the two metal batons she was practicing with heavy in her hands. Said hands were callused from long weeks of training as she gripped the two weapons, the ones her father had recommended she use. Train her they would in the ninja arts, but her family drew the line at letting her use live blades. When she'd pointed she could just ring up live blades, her father had countered that if she had her ring, blades would be the last thing she'd be making.

She swung her batons in the final movements of the routine, ending with a slash meant to go for someone's throat. With real blades it was supposed to cut both the artery and wind pipe, but with her batons breaking their neck or at least crushing their trachea was the likely result. With a sigh of relief, she let her batons droop, collapsing on the floor of the family dojo a moment and getting her breath back.

She'd been the one to ask her parents to train her in the family martial arts. They'd never really taught her, and she hadn't really all been that inclined, content with sitting off to one side and watching her brother and sister go through their moves. She'd found it tiring just to look at them, which was why it had taken so long for her to ask. It had been Yuuno's idea, surprisingly enough, ventured during dinner one night with the family. She needed a more mundane way to protect herself, in the worst case scenario of her ring running out and her magic used up. Her family had been supportive of the idea. They'd been quite insistent upon it, in fact.

As she lay back, eyes closed, Nanoha mentally ordered her Ring to bring up the latest batch of paperwork she was working on. The forms appeared in the darkness of her eyelids, ready to be filled out. She sighed, relaxing as she began filling in the multiple pages of paper work simultaneously. It was so soothing... she really couldn't understand why Yuuno was always so reluctant to do it. It wasn't like you had to fill it in by hand.

Nanoha only did that because it was even more fun!

Soft toweling padded at her forehead, and Nanoha opened her eyes, her paperwork auto-saving as she found Yuuno hunched over her, smiling in tired exasperation as he towered off her forehead. "Get dried up, will you?" he chided her, his bracelet-like Device with all its disk-shaped charms jangling as he patted the sweat off her forehead. "You're going to catch a cold lying on the floor like that, not to mention muscle aches."

"I finished my cool-down exercises," Nanoha protested, but pushed herself up, taking the towel and begging to wipe her face herself. Her white gi was moist and sweat-stained, all the more so since she was wearing a black, full-body garment like a unitard or wetsuit under it that reached all the way to her ankles, wrists and neck, the undergarment she wore under her Green Lantern uniform.

Yuuno snorted. "Given how little you sleep, that's not going to do much. I want you get a full night's sleep tonight. In bed by nine, no VR training, no paperwork, no cop shows, no Space Sheriff Gavan past 8."

"Yuuno-kun!" Nanoha protested.

"Don't make me make it a medical order," he said sternly. "You still haven't recovered from that surge of Invader hunts and that thing with Yuri and her girls. Just give me one night's complete sleep and you can abuse your body for the rest of the week."

Nanoha pouted. "It's not that bad. I'm young and healthy, I can take it!"

"But your parents and your friends want you to make the transition to _old_ and healthy, and that's not going happen if you keep at it like this," Yuuno said. "Miyuki already heated you a bath. Get washed up for dinner."

"Who's the senior officer around here?" she complained good-naturedly, pouting. Nanoha complied with a smile though, draping the towel over her shoulders and wiping at her hair.

As she stepped out into the late afternoon air, Yuuno having gone on ahead to help her mother in the kitchen— he insisted on helping with the chores now that he lived with them officially— Green Lantern couldn't help but relax.

All was right with the world.

…

_**Stories Out Of The Fourth Estate!**_

The spoon rang on the plate as Kuro dropped it, staring at the newspaper she was holding in shock. Illya perked up, concerned. "What is it?" she asked her sister. "Who did it? Where? Who was hurt? What needs to be avenged!"

"It says the up and coming model and writer Kousaka Kirino, creator of novel and anime _Imoutoshi_ has recently come out as being in an indecent relationship with her brother!" Kuro read. "Kousaka-sama, I knew there was a reason I liked you!" She clenched her fist. "I must show you my support in this difficult time!

The table sighed. "Kuro-chan, I know it's a genetic pre-disposition, but please keep those comments to yourself," Kiritsugu said. "Or at least filter them."

"Yes, dad," Kuro said as Illya sighed.

Saber sniffed. "You are too lenient, Kiritsugu," she said. "Allowing such perversions…"

"As his wife, that's my line," Irisviel said happily. "Would you want us to crack down and have you sleep somewhere else, Saber-chan?"

Sber coughed delicately. "However, it's nice to see you are a kind and understanding father who is always supportive of his children. No matter how unconventional they might be."

"_Smooooth _save there, Saber-chan," Ruby said.

…

_**Mornings**_

It was a perfectly ordinary morning.

Rider woke to absolute darkness. She always did after making love to Sakura. She didn't trust the glasses that contained her Mystic Eyes to stay on through what they did, and the contact lenses irritated her, so she resorted to Breaker Gorgon. While Sakura sometimes complained they couldn't look each other in the eye when they got intimate, Rider felt it was much more intimate. She could feel Sakura next to her, the salty scents of sweat and over fluids, the sound of her breath and the beating of her heart mixed with the faint rustle of the bedclothes at each minute movement…

Rider jerked at the loud banging on the door. Sakura groaned, muttering darkly under her breath.

"Up and at it you two!" Rin, professional moment killer, cried cheerfully through the door. "Sakura, you have that archery club thing, remember? Come on, I want to support my little sister as she and her club kick ass and takes names!"

Sakura threw a shoe at the door.

"That's the spirit!" Rin yelled cheerfully as she skipped off to knock on Assassin's door.

"Just a little of her blood," Rider muttered. "She'll be out cold for hours…"

"She's gone, we have five minutes," Sakura said instead.

Rider paused, considered it, and decided she had better fluids to try and extract from a Tohsaka.

…

_**Blue Angel**_

The name sort of stuck with Sakura the first few times she tried to go out and do good. She had started with the tried, true and best of all _simple_ ways. It had gone quite easily thanks to Ganthet-sensei teaching her how to get her ring to look for things. Still, it took her a while to find a cat stuck up a tree.

"Are you an angel?" the astonished little boy asked as a smiling Sakura drifted down to hand him his cat, to the excitement of his friends and the old lady who was trying to find him ladder.

"Yes!" Sakura chirped spontaneously. "I'm the helpful Blue Angel."

And so the name had spread.

Tomoyo had, predictably, gone nuts when the literally infinite clothing possibilities came to her. Sakura hadn't even mentioned it, but Tomoyo had obviously thought through Yuuno's statement of how her ring had a lot of the capabilities of his and Nanoha's. Despite Sakura's attempts to try to convince her to cut it down to one or two, aided by Nanoha's argument that Sakura needed a distinctive and consistent uniform to help with recognition, Tomoyo had come up with seven, one for every day of the week, and she was working on other seasonal variations as well. She considered working with only black, infinite shades of blue and white a challenge, apparently.

Sakura kept the wings though, wide, blue and stylized, resembling The Fly Card's wings. She flew, therefore she must have wings. She was used to it. Besides, they were awesome!

Most important, of course, was how to protect her identity. Tomoyo had lobbied that everyone should know it was Sakura, so that they could recognize her awesomeness and greatness. Sakura had been relieved to find the entire Association backing her up on a resounding 'NO!' on this one. So Tomoyo had dug into the full selection of available face and identity concealing accessories Earth had to offer and… _did_ things with them. Sakura suspected Haruna had helped. There were visors like Nanoha's, any number of scarves, stiff collars that came up to her nose, at least three kinds of veil, and masks. Oh, _so_ many masks…

For the first time in her life Sakura felt she needed to have a talk with her best friend about moderating her hobbies.

…

But not anytime soon, since she seemed to be enjoying herself and Sakura didn't want to be confrontational…

…

_**Difficulties**_

Fate Testarossa, recently turned Fate Testarossa-Harlaown, waited patiently in her seat, hands held deliberately still at her lap. This wasn't the first time she'd come here, but it was still an ordeal, if in a different way from what most people thought.

Eventually, the seat in front of her was occupied. If looks could kill, the cold one directed at her would have sent her so far past dead she'd come back to life and die at least three more times.

Still, she hadn't spat at the window this time. That was an improvement. Not letting herself take a deep breath and desperately trying to keep her expression as neutral as possible so the woman before her wouldn't think she was being mocking or gloating, Fate managed to get the words out of her mouth. "Hello mother," she greeted Precia Testarossa.

It was a full twenty minutes before the other woman became so violent, screaming vitriol and potentially hurting herself that the guards on her side had to sedate her. Yes, a definite improvement.

After a while, Chrono entered her side of the chamber. "Ready to go?" he asked, in his usual terse, Chrono-like way.

Fate nodded jerkily, getting slowly to her feet and keeping her head bowed, hoping her hair and the lighting would conceal her face.

There was no fooling a big brother's eyes. Fate felt gentle hands dabbing at her face with the pocket square an officer and a gentleman always carried, and she clenched her eyes shut, the tears flowing freely again. She felt arms rising to her shoulders in a gesture that had lately become familiar again, when once it had only been a product of dreams and false memories.

Fate felt Chrono's embrace enfold her as she cried against her big brother's chest, and listened to his soothing words as he stroked her hair. Yes, she was grateful. Yes, she had so much. But still, she was so, so selfish, to still want Precia Testarossa's love…

Chrono felt her cry against him, and did all he could, reflecting that Precia Testarossa didn't deserve this selfless daughter.

Within the room, unseen, another cried, for all the pain in the little sister she had always wanted and had held for so briefly in a dream, the pain she could never help go away. And one with all the power of the wrath of divinity blessed and cursed Chrono for being there to offer the comfort she could not.

…

_**More**_ _**Stories Out Of The Fourth Estate!**_

_Mysterious Vigilante Loose On Mahora! Hero or Menace?_

Highschool Class 1-A stared blankly at the news post on the bulletin board, especially at the byline by their resident reporter.

"Asakura…" Asuna said blandly as other classes read the news and expressed their own confusion. "What gives? Of _course_ mysterious vigilantes are loose on Mahora! Mysterious vigilantes are _always_ loose on Mahora! It's what mysterious vigilantes _do!_" She did not add their class probably made up a third of the mysterious vigilantes in the city.

"Yeah Asakura, this is kind of lame," Hibiki Aya from the class next door said. "So there's a new vigilante. So what?"

"Huh hu hu…" Asakura said. "Do you think I'd post something like this without purpose? Of _course_ I know our fair school-slash-city is filled with mysterious vigilantes, and more power to them, pillars of the community and whatnot. I mean a _mysterious, _mysterious vigilante!"

"Make sense, reporter girl!" Akira Kurosawa (no relation) cried from the back of the crowd.

Asakura put a hand to her chest. "As you know, I am unfailing in my pursuit for the truth. There is no obstacle in my path, no trifling matter I will allow to stop me–"

"I'll see you in court, Asakura!" Kimura Kaere cried.

"Sister, please do not cause a scene…" her identical twin sister Kaede chided her.

"– and so at great personal expense to my life, when I found out about this new vigilante," Asakura pointed at the dark, blurry picture of what seemed to be a figure in a deep purple cloak, "I immediately set out to break the story! Putting myself in the path of great harm, I set out to interview every single one of the known vigilantes of Mahora to ask them of what they knew of this figure!"

Well, that had explained the calls to Negi from Sister Shakti asking him to reign in his students and keep them out of the way. Asuna had been curios about that, since official Mahora policy was to ignore them.

Some people looked skeptical, but most were nodding along. Asakura's pursuit of news according to the Lois Lane School of Journalism was widely known, and more than one firefighter had yelled at her for suddenly appearing on top of their ladder.

"Imagine my surprise I found out that _absolutely no one_ knew who this person was, or even if they were a boy or a girl!" Asakura said, clearly enjoying being at the center of attention. "Not a one!"

"They could just be covering for her," Hito Nami suggested normally.

Asakura shook her head. "It didn't sound like it. Most at least know each other's name, or at least their vigilante name. No one knew who this person was."

"Does that mean they gave them some kind of derogatory name that will eventually be adopted as a personal name, signifying their acceptance into mysterious vigilante society?" Tsunetsuki Matoi, her kohai from the photography club, said.

Asakura shook her head. "Not even that! They didn't have enough information, so they just stuck a number on this one. They're calling this one number 234," she said.

Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned, eager for more questions, and blinked as she came face to face with an androgynous figure a bit shorter than her in a black bodysuit, purple cloak and featureless black mask. The figure politely handed her a business card. As the people around freaked at realizing one of them was not like the others, Asakura reflexively took the card and read it.

It said, '_Spoiler – Occupation, Mysterious Vigilante_'.

That was as far as she got before the ninja smoke bomb went off. As Asuna roared to give pursuit, followed by most of the other girls in the hallway, Asakura reflected to herself that there were still directions for the weird in her life to go…

…

_**The Young Ladies Who Lunch**_

"More tea, Miss Edelfelt?" Suzuka offered.

"Oh, why thank you, Miss Tsukimura," Luvia said, and Suzuka delicately poured her a cup.

"These scones are simply wonderful, Miss Bannings!" Tomoyo said with a saintly, mysterious smile©™. "You simply _must_ try some, Miss Jinguuji!"

Kuesu stared at the beatifically smiling little girl and wondered how the hell this could be the same ninja-recruiting terror she had heard of. It was a thought she latched on to, else she go mad at the ridiculous, Victorian-era ladies talk.

"So," Alisa said, delicately stirring honey into her teacup. "I have heartily dispatched 12 minions of evil this week. How does the rest of you fair?"

"Sadly, I was only able to dispatch a paltry three this fortnight past," Ayaka said. "For as you know, as an administrator, I am seldom upon the field. Yet they were mighty foes, and honorably slain."

Tomoyo clapped her hands together. "Ah, how wonderful! And you Kuesu? How stands your tally against the forces of the ever-vile who would despoil the innocents who walk the night?"

"We killed one of those Witch things and a bunch of Invaders," Kuesu said.

Everyone sighed. "You really aren't getting into the spirit of all this, Kuesu-chan," Suzuka said.

…

_**Meido Versus Maid! **_

The two locked gazes, refusing to budge, to yield. In another world, another place, another time, another circumstance, they might have been allies, respected colleagues. Perhaps tomorrow, they would be. Today, however, they were implacable enemies, and there could be no mercy, no quarter, no forgiveness.

"Mecha Hisui is better!" Kohaku proclaimed.

"Chachamaru is obviously superior!" Hakase retorted, incensed.

"Rubbish! Mecha Hisui is the ultimate moe retro robo unit!" Kohaku declared, fist clenched tight. "Cooking! Cleaning! Combat! Her capabilities are top notch!"

"Compared to what, a vacuum cleaner?" Hakase scoffed. "Chachamaru serves world-class cuisine! Her cleaning skills can destroy all evidence in a crime scene! No kaijuu is safe from her firepower! And!" Hakase delivered to coup de grace. "_**She is fully XXX capable! With anatomically correct H-parts!"**_

Chachamaru, face completely blank even as it overheated from embarrassment, did not feel the urge to sigh because she had no need to breathe, but she felt like it. "I'm terribly sorry about this," she instead said to their other visitor. "Mother can be quite… vocal."

"MY DAUGHTER'S SO CUTE!" Hakase roared.

Rivet-faced Mecha Hisui did not move. Chachamaru supposed the poor dear didn't have a lot of emote subroutines. "Apology unnecessary," the other robot maid said.

"Perhaps we should serve tea and a snack," Chachamaru suggested. "Which do you wish to prepare?"

The two became very good friends. So did their masses of production model sisters. And everyone agreed that the gigantic Mecha Hisui G was just as maidly as her smaller counterparts.

Chachamaru and her sisters kept her existence a secret from their mother though, so as not to give her the idea to build a 'Grand Chachamaru X'.

…

_**Crazy Friend Stuff**_

"So," Nanoha asked as she carefully set her bait on the end of her line and cast it out. It landed in the small inflatable pool they'd set up. "How's disarming all the world's nuclear weapons coming along?"

Superman cast his own line, then took a sip from his can of soda, letting his feet kick back and forth over the ledge they were sitting on. "Not bad. I'm actually due to go in a couple of minute again, they're just preparing the site."

"I can't believe everyone's actually on board with this!" Nanoha said. "Even those Northern countries…"

"Actually, they're cheating, but that was to be expected," Superman said. "Everyone's cheating, actually. They're nuclear facilities, so there's already a lot of lead to try and hide things from my x-ray vision. But it still means a lot of dangerous weapons are coming out of commission."

"I say it's about time," said Phil, munching on a sandwich and sitting next to them, his feet dangling too. "Those things are dangerous. Everyone knows they're a bad idea. We've only really used them, what, twice?"

On Nanoha's other side, Rajesh nodded, reeling back his line and checking the hook. A fish-shaped plastic bag of candy hung from it. "The rest was just messing around to see how big you could make it," he said, opening the bag and peeling open the Mars Bar. He handed the rest to Manuel next to him, who wasn't having much luck with his own fishing line.

Everyone nodded sagely as Superman, Nanoha, and the rest of the crew having lunch on the 35th Street construction site went back to trying to fish from the little pool in the park across the street.

…

_**Left Out**_

The male components of Super Young Team and Big Science Action all sighed.

"Maybe we can learn magic," Sunburst said. "I know a guy in Kyoto…"

They all considered it.

"I'm still not sure that'll get us into the United Magical Girl Association," Most Excellent Superbat said.

"Maybe we're too 'superhero' to count," Big Atomic Battery Boy said.

They all sighed.

"It's so unfair," Boss Bishounen said. "They let Tuxedo Kamen in and all he does is throw around roses!"

There was more sighing as they wished Grant Morrison remembered them more…

…

_**Secret Origins Of An Invasion**_

Somewhere in space, a meteor was headed for Earth. Several meteors, actually.

This is a _bad_ thing.

…

**- To be continued...**

…

A/N: AND WE'RE BACK!

The Materials, like in the games, were essentially assembled from the most badass bits the Book of Darkness collected, e.g. Stern is Nanoha plus Yuuno Plus Vita, etc. Since there are even more badass bits to choose from, they've gotten upgrades. Dearche has UBW, for instance, Levi has Syaoran and Negi's lightning spells, etc. They basically have thematically appropriate extras, but not all parts.

Please review, C&C welcome.

Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.


	2. Secretive Origins, Part 1

A/N: Happy New Year!

In case you haven't heard, I'm writing an original fiction book. Link is in my profile, as ffnet doesn't allow copy pasting anymore. Still, if you find this not to be an obstacle: smashwords com/books / view/380166

….

Takamachi Nanoha of 2814: LeaguerS

by Shadow Crystal Mage

Chapter 1: Secretive Origins, Part 1

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story. If I did… well, this would all be canon. WARNING: MAY CAUSE HEAD EXPLOSION!

….

Clark Kent was having a perfectly normal day. Get up, take a bath, shave, have breakfast, head for work, do 9 non-specific good deeds on the way, check in at the Daily Planet, type up some stories, use their newsfeeds to keep up to date, defuse a few more nuclear bombs, have lunch, pine over Lois, do a few more good deeds, deal with a few more nukes that needed defusing, go on patrol, several more random good deeds and a few of those 'Invader' things, bag the crystals to send to Blue Angel for processing, go back to his apartment, watch the news, drink milk, go to sleep, have bizarre and psychedelic weird brain vision, bolt up screaming, wash face, hear signal watch calling for help…

"Nanoha told me about days like these," he muttered as he flew. "I think I could have done with just the voices…"

….

It was a bright and sunny day in Uminari. But then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

…

(We apologize for the preceding silliness. Please know that those responsible have been sacked. This will teach the writer to be AFK without locking his computer.)

It was a bright and llama-filled sunny day in Uminari. Then the llama-meteors fell out of the sky.

…

(We apologize once again for the preceding silliness. Please know those responsible have also been sacked and the writer has undergone a crash course in logging off.)

It was a bright and sunny day in Uminari. Then the meteors filled with biting Swedish moose fell out of the sky.

…

(We apologize even more for the preceding silliness. Please know those responsible have again been sacked and the writer has decided to tie himself up to his computer with an empty bottle next to him and just not go anywhere..)

It was a bright and sunny day in Uminari. Then the meteors fell out of the sky.

Meteors falling out of the sky are a perfectly normal thing to happen to any planet not custom-designed to be on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle, where the turtle will conveniently snatch any inconvenient meteors out of the sky. It's a part of the natural order of things, and while it will be bloody inconvenient for most of that pesky indigenous life, the planet will be over it in a few hundred years or so. Nothing to even worry about. When one lived in a cold, uncaring universe that Lovecraft wrote-gasmed about with maybe a little bit too much lack of understanding of what exactly non-Euclidean geometry entailed, it was to be expected.

Fortunately for that pesky indigenous life, it was a lot harder to kill off than most.

The first meteor had barely cleared the stratosphere when a giant green net caught it, the shock-absorbing weave slowing down the fiery rock and keeping it from breaking apart.

"Lacrosse!" Nanoha cried happily, having a definite lack of understanding about how exactly the game was played.

As she put the meteor– it was HUGE! Certainly extinction big. Why did no one else notice it sooner? Honestly, did they expect her to do everything?– in a large construct bag to hand over to some random scientist for study later, and began to catch another one, there was a crack from the meteor in her bag. Startled, she looked down. A weird white blob with red spots on it stared back at her just before it shot her with energy beams.

….

Tokyo, bereft of Green Lanterns, was in a position to find out firsthand extraterrestrial attacks weren't as neat as the stuff you see in toku shows. While they got a lot of kaiju rising out of the ocean, they had long since adapted to this. Streets had been built wide and reinforced to deal with kaiju walking on them and while the common image of giant monsters has them shouldering through every building in front of them, the truth is that if they're not in any particular hurry or after prey, animals of any sort wouldn't walk through something if they had the choice of going around it, even if this does take longer. As such, buildings tend to stay standing, though the outside tends to get abraded a lot.

Meteors, unlike kaiju, don't act like this. They just fell where they pleased with absolutely no consideration for others.

"This is supremely boring your majesty," Gilgamesh sighed as he shot down another giant meteor in a hail of Noble Phantasms. "They don't even move in an interesting manner. Honestly, even that perverted she-mongrel with the unnatural sibling lust could do this."

"I'll pass her your compliments then," Tuxedo Kamen said, sitting cross legged next to him and working on a Sudoku puzzle. They never let Gilgamesh go alone, for reasons of keeping him out of trouble.

"My compliments, your majesty?" Gilgamesh said as he shot down two more. Honestly, he was getting tempted to let them get lower so they'd actually provide some sort of challenge.

"That you think Kuro could do something as good as you," Mamoru said. "I'm sure she'll appreciate hearing you think so highly of her."

Gilgamesh gave his king a sideways look. Tuxedo Kamen grinned widely at him. He sighed. "Well, I suppose she has… _some_… ability," he conceded.

Mamoru nodded and reached over to pat the golden-armored man reassuringly on the knee. "It's tough softening up and making friends, isn't it?" he said.

Gilgamesh frowned, but said nothing, staring upwards and shooting down another meteor.

All in all, it was actually a moderately pleasant day in Tokyo.

….

The island was beautiful. It had been made to be so.

The island was clean. It had been meant to be ever-unspoiled, set apart from the world.

The island was surrounded by giant sharks, giant squid, giant turtles and other kaiju-grade organic death machines. None came to the islands without the blessings of the island's sponsors or a lot of luck.

Only the sky broke the illusion that there was nothing else beyond those shores. From time to time, narrow trails of white would cross the sky, as if one of the gods were slowly drawing a paintbrush across it. On most days, these were thin, wispy things, and you could barely make out the small shapes like strange birds that led at the head of them. Sometimes, the moon turned green, and there was much hubbub as people tried to figure out how _that_ happened.

Today, there had been balls of fiery rock leaving trails of smoke across the sky, all coming the crimson star claimed by Ares. That seemed a bad omen.

Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, current queen of the Amazons, said so as she and her mother rode along the beach, staring at the lines on the sky. "These omens do not bode well, mother," she said, as she got her horse back under control. "Fiery mountains descending from the sky… the world might be facing a dark hour."

Her mother sniffed. "Then Man's World will have to face it alone," she said, emphasizing the words, firmly reminding her daughter it had nothing to do with them. "Whatever happens beyond these shores is not our concern, Diana. Here the gods will protect us." She turned her back upon the ocean, upon the border of their world, and turned to face the island, with its gold and white marble buildings that had nothing to do with what lay beyond the horizon.

"I hope you're right mother," the tall, dark-haired young woman said. Yet she glanced once more at the ominous skies. Even as she watched, another fiery stone fell, and she shuddered as an ill feeling came over her. She remembered the green moons, and wondered if that had been a warning. "But I fear you might not be…"

….

In Misaki Town, the day was turning out to be a bitch.

There were a lot of esoteric and frankly messy rules regarding the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. There'd been all that stuff about how there could only be one pair in existence at a time, and that you could only see the 'deaths' of beings who had a 'concept' of damage and death that he could understand and how beings from other worlds or Grand Reality Marbles or whatever would be impervious to his eyes because they didn't have a concept of death or a different concept of death or were not part of the common sense of the planet or whatever…

However, as the nice girl in the goth makeup and top hat that Shiki would sometimes see had told him, this was all bullcrap made up by people who had never actually talked to someone from another world or even examined the eyes sitting around in their armchairs and acting like they actually knew what they were talking about even though they didn't have a clue, and that everything had the same concept of death everywhere, because everything eventually died, even if some were a lot harder to kill than most, but his experiences defined what he saw. She'd actually been very nice and helpful and had cautioned him to be responsible because dying was final and anyway she didn't like all the extra work. At that point he'd kind of stopped thinking because if he did he might have had a nervous breakdown.

As it turned out, trying to 'kill' meteors was a lot harder to do than killing Roa, for him at least. Already, fires raged and several builds had been destroyed as the meteors tore a path through the town. Shiki had wondered why they hadn't hit and made the city explode like he'd always imagined given how Gundam kept presenting what would happen if you did a colony drop, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And then those tripod things had come out of the meteors and started firing lasers all over the place, and he'd realized they weren't in a Bruce Willis meteor disaster movie but in a giant monster alien invasion movie. Still, they very well couldn't just let those alien tripod things do as they pleased, so they had reluctantly unleashed the one thing they had at their disposal that had a reasonable chance of stopping, or at least slowing down, a space invasion until Green Lantern-kun or someone else who actually knew what to do got there. Ciel had grumbled but even she had to admit that there really wasn't much she could do… well, not much she could do that could cover the many tripods running around shooting things.

"Go go go, Mecha Hisui G!" Kohaku cried, pointing dramatically into the sky as the giant hatch in the front lawn opened down into the underground laboratory hanger. "SUCK MY DI00, HAKASE SATOMI!"

"Kohaku, language," Akiha said sternly.

"Ah, apologies Akiha-sama."

Inside Shiki, something died a little when he realized he wasn't excited at the prospect of seeing a battle between a giant mecha and alien invasion tripods. "Growing up kinda sucks," he sighed. The nice girl in the goth makeup and top hat patted him reassuringly on the shoulder as his familiar Len nuzzled against his leg.

"Mecha Hisui G, Rocket Punch," the giant maid robot said in a monotone basso.

After a moment, the real Hisui said, "Sister… you didn't actually add breast rockets, did you?"

"Hisui-chan!" Kohaku said, shocked. "Do you honestly think I would do something so tasteless?"

"Yes," everyone in hearing range said blandly.

It turns out, they were flamethrowers.

….

Batman had been having a bad night. Markedly worse than usual. The three seemingly-normal scientists sabotaging that deep space monitoring station, okay. Them having strange powers he hadn't expected, nothing unusual, he knew those kinds of things happened a lot in places less fanatically patrolled than Gotham. Even the weird, wall-walking attack dog wasn't all that markedly strange. Poison Ivy made those kinds of things all the time.

Then came the meteors and War of the Worlds tripods and all in all he was quite ready to blame all this on Clark. Especially when he left the fight in Metropolis. Batman went after him when the army came. While the Batwing could outfly, outfight and outlast anything anyone else could get into the air, except for the reverse fusion bomb and other similar special weaponry he had there was really nothing he could do here that the army couldn't. He broke off, flying after Superman, who was just on the edge of radar.

He followed him north and inland, into mountains that still held snow. They eventually led to a hidden facility. Everything about it screamed 'government', most especially the ordinance around it. The ground was strewn with destroyed tanks, jeeps and craters, looking like… well, like Superman had hit it.

"Oh, that can't be good," he muttered to himself. One finger tapped his belt where he kept the emergency Kryptonite.

He landed the Batwing, following the trail of obvious destruction. When Clark wasn't being subtle, he _really_ wasn't subtle. Pushing open a door half off its hinges, he paused. The room was filled with crimson pods, inside which floated mostly naked, unconscious people. It was a type he had encountered already earlier this night, and his eyes flicked sideways for wall-walking attack dogs until he heard the banging. He followed his ears, a batarang in hand in case he needed to attack quickly.

He found Superman beating a thick metal door into submission. He threw the batarang, imbedding it into the seam of the door next to Superman's head as a friendly warning. Very friendly. It didn't even explode.

"Hold it, Superman," he called. "Destroying government property isn't your style." _Most of the time_, he added mentally. "What's going on?"

Superman gestured. "See for yourself," he said, ripping the door off the rest of the way. He strode in, Batman following after he retrieved his batarang. Inside was some kind of control room or monitoring station. Screens displayed what looked like vitals. There was something off about them however, something…

The next door was much easier to push through. Superman simply shoved it forward, and it ripped through the frame and into the next room. Batman stopped at the threshold as Superman walked in. A green-skinned, definitely-not-human figure stood at the end of the room, legs and feet restrained in metal while their head seemed to be stuck in some sort of machine. What looked like its eyes were closed, and it seemed to be unconscious. "What is it?" Batman said as Superman approached the figure.

"Mankind's only hope," Superman said as he began operating a nearby control panel.

"I thought that was you?" Batman said blandly, wondering which batarang to use in case this went bad. Electric seemed the best option.

"Well, usually…" Superman said as he raised a pair of levers. "But right now it's him."

"He can't be the only hope then."

"I am _not_ editing what I just said…" The machine holding the green figure in place began to unlock, the metal shackles at his arms and feet sliding open. Batman considered that sloppy design. What, not even any redundancies or verification? "He's been trying to reach out to me telepathically, but that stasis field interfered. When his message finally broke through, I came to rescue him."

"That must have been some message, considering you ditched me in Metropolis," Batman said.

An embarrassed look flitted across Superman's face. "_Yeaaaaah_… sorry about that."

"What's he doing here?" Batman asked, keeping his hands on his weapons.

_The invasion!_

The words rang in his head, soundless, loud, intense and unblockable.

_I came to warn you, but I was captured and imprisoned here. They wouldn't listen. Do you practice a committee-based form of government?_

"Big surprise," Batman said blandly.

_I sense you do not trust me,_ the being… projected? _Perhaps this will help?_

The figure's form began to change, and Batman involuntarily stepped back, instincts and experiences from fighting Clayface coming to the fore a the sudden shapeshifting. The changes were mostly minimal. The long, thin limbs and wide torso altered, taking proportions similar to a man's. The wide, staring eyes shrunk slightly, and the elongated skull shorted, becoming closer in shape to a human's but obviously still not, with its heavy brow ridge, deep-set eyes and slightly pointy head. Something like a black oversuit began to grow over his body, covering all but the figure's hands and head. A red band like a belt appeared over his torso, and a pair of red bands crossed over his chest, seeming to secure a blue cape in place with large gold buttons. What looked like blue boots appeared at his feet. In the center of his chest, where the red bands crossed, was a white disk dominated by a red symbol divided into eighths.

The seemingly male figure stepped forward, offering his hand to Batman. "I am J'onn J'onzz of Ma'aleca'andra. What your people call Mars."

Batman did not take the proffered hand. "Don't take it personally J'onn. He doesn't trust anyone," Superman explained.

"A wise policy," the Martian said blandly.

Superman led them out of the prison chamber. He frowned at the pods, but they didn't have time to deal with them right them. The people inside were obviously alive, if unconscious, and they had no time to try and revive them. "We'll need to contact the joint chiefs and the United Nations right away," Superman said. "Hopefully we can still–"

Floodlights snapped on. "Hold it right there Superman!" a voice called.

A line of soldiers stood before them, weapons raised. Batman resisted the not-unreasonable urge to step directly behind Clark. And.. there was something wrong with their guns…

"You're trespassing in a restricted area," the officer in charge said. "Our orders are to keep that freak here."

"Wait!" Superman said, stepping in front of the Martian. "I'll vouch for him! You need to let us go!"

"I don't think so," the officer said resolutely.

"But the world's security may be at stake!" Superman said.

"That's why he'll never leave here alive."

The officers and all the soldiers began to change, growing pale, their uniforms melting into the bodies as their heads seemed ot be pulled upwards. Their bodies took on the strange black and white, seemingly-hollow look of the attack… creature from earlier that night.

"It's them," J'onn said, and Batman felt a flash of anger that wasn't his burn through his mind.

The white beings raised their weapons and opened fire.

This was somehow all Clark's fault, he just knew it…

….

It soon became obvious the world was being invaded. Again.

In Mahora Academy, this came as something of a relief, since that meant they wouldn't have to use that silly "It's CGI!" excuse. Chachamaru's sisters were deployed, and Ala Alba took to battle against the tripods as the teachers tried to convince the students that, no, this time it didn't seem like they could help out, sorry. It was hard going against the tripods. Their beam weapons were fast and they were annoyingly sturdy. Still, the magical teachers were able to go on the offensive while the rest went at defense, protecting the civilians and what buildings they would.

"WHAT KIND OF ORSON WELLES WAR OF THE WORLDS BULLSHIT IS THIS?!" Chisame cried.

In Tomoeda, the entire town had been surrounded by a gigantic blue force field. Hammer as they might, the tripods were unable to break through and began setting the surrounding forests on fire, which prompted a panicked reaction from Sakura to try and reverse the damage and save all the cute little forest critters.

"Hoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" she cried. "Syaoran-kun, I wish you were here!-!-!-!-!"

In Mitakihara, a confident young busty blonde in a nice hat and her new magical girl apprentice, a sweet, wide-eyed redhead rushed forward to fight, even as other Puella Magi in the city tried to husband their strength and were suddenly overcome by the Witches that came awake at the sudden rush of fear.

"_TIRO…! __**FINALLLLLLEEEEEEE**__!_"

In Fuyuki, fires were starting as the tripods tried to burn the city, only to be caught in barrier spells and shunted sideways away from civilians. Even as the fire department rushed to contain the blazes, just out of sight, sometimes visible as transparent giants, the tripods were getting their asses kicked by legendary heroic warriors and the people they lived with.

"_EX_…_**CALIBUR!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!**_**"**

"_Class Card, INSTALL!_"

And in Uminari…

"I'm almost sorry for those things," Momoka said as she helped find places for people to bunker in at the Midori-Ya. She smiled a bit grimly. "Almost."

Miyuki glanced out the window. "You know, it's times like this I realize our little sisters are pretty badass," she said softly to Shinobu.

Her girlfriend nodded, squeezing her hand gently. "Doesn't stop me from worrying though," she said.

Up in the sky, battle raged as meteors that tried to land in Uminari were absorbed into the specially-tuned barrier field Hayate, on a break from TSAB business, and Yuuno had devised together, bringing them into an empty battlefield filled only by flying Mahou Shoujo and slightly confused Puella Magi, Witches and Familiars, the latter two hiding deeper within their own territories. Within waited the Queen of the Night Sky, Unbreakable Dark the Sovereign of the Purple Sky, the Lord Ruler of Darkness, the Exterminator of Starlight, the Assailant of Thunderblade, the God of the Infinite Library and the Green Devil. Oh, and Arf, Fate, Alisa and Suzuka too.

"Somehow, I feel as if I'd just been snubbed," Alisa muttered, Nanoha's borrowed magic burning within her as she leveled her Raging Heart copy and shot a tripod's leg off.

"Maybe the feeling you're getting means it's not time for our world debut yet?" Suzuka suggested. She was clad in a kilt, a lionskin and sandals, and carried a heavy club in one hand with casual ease. Next to her were some boulders. She picked one up easily, tossed it into the air, and then swung her heavy club. It went flying with a crack, slamming hard into one of the walking tripod's legs. It wobbled a little but didn't fall and Suzuka sighed. Stupid Hercules wasn't working either.

"Yes, you can let us handle this, Alisa-chan," Fate agreed, rotating her shoulder and throwing back her cape as she reset for another shot with Bardiche in the Device's rarely-used shooting mode. Alisa, now experienced, looked somewhere else so she wouldn't have to go through the inevitable litany of, "I am not turned on by Fate's outfit, I am not turned on by Fate's outfit, I am not turned on by Fate's slutty outfit…". "We can manage without you."

Alisa huffed. "_Oh_ no. I am not going to be left behind! I know how this goes. Soon we'll be getting less and less screen time, until in the third season we're replaced entirely by some new characters with cool guns and rollerblades. Uh-uh, not happening Testarossa. Suzuka-chan and I are we going to step up and be right here with you and Nanoha-chan, just like we were when we fought Yuri-chan!"

"…" Suzuka said hesitantly over the sounds of large area of effect spells leveling buildings with impunity. "I'm not sure I have anything that can really help. I mean, Hercules is kind if a bust…"

"Be creative!" Alisa declared. "There's got to be some dead hero who can help! How about Gilgamesh-san? Maybe he'd work!"

"Hardly creative though," Arf commented, smirking as she crossed her arms under her huge breasts.

Alisa pulled something from her pocket. "Fetch," she deadpanned as she tossed away the dog biscuit.

Fate sweatdropped as her still-humanoid familiar went scrambling after it on all fours. "Alisa-chan, please don't tease Arf like that," she said.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!" Boom.

Fate was up and flying as she headed quickly towards the spot where Nanoha had fallen. "Nanoha-chan! Are you all right?-!" she cried.

"I'm sure your wife is okay," Alisa said, floating after her as Suzuka jogged to keep up. They paused to let some ice from one of Hayate's spells fall from the sky before detouring after the other blonde. "See? Her ring is still working, she's fine."

"She's not my wife!" Fate snapped, blushing. She turned back to Nanoha. "Is she all right? Is she all right? Ring-chan, is she all right?"

"_Physical condition of Green Lantern is stable,"_ the ring said. "_However_,_ unknown unauthorized psychic contact was established. Running first stage anti-psionic unconsciousness countermeasures._"

A small squeaky mallet appeared over Nanoha's head and gently began tapping on it repeatedly. Fate, Alisa and Suzuka sweatdropped.

Nanoha suddenly sat up. "_Klaatu barada nikto!_" she cried, making the other girls yelp in surprise. "_Ma'aleca'andra trapestos rinjestis virtranim!_" She paused. "Oh. Vision's over." She reached over and flicked the squeaky mallet away, and it disappeared with a cute pop. "I need to go. Alisa-chan, pay attention to your phone, I might need my magic back."

As Alisa and Suzuka looked at each other in surprise, Fate asked, "Voices in your head calling your name?"

Nanoha nodded. "With a location reference this time. Honestly, if I made a new friend every time I heard a voice in my head…" She paused to consider it, then brightened. "Oh! I _do_ make a new friend every time I hear a voice in my head!" She sounded very pleased by this. "Well, gotta go answer, potential friend to make…"

"I'll go with you!" Fate said, taking it less for granted that the voice in the head will always be friend material. "You'll need someone to watch your back!"

Nanoha shook her head, already rising as Fate followed. "I'm going to the other side of the world. Even you can't keep up at those speeds, Fate-chan. At least, not for long."

"Then take Yuuno!" she said. "Arf and I can manage the barrier!"

Nanoha paused then nodded. "Good luck Fate-chan, Suzuka-chan, Alisa-chan, Arf-chan!" she called as she continued rising into the air. "Keep the town safe until we get back!"

Above, the green trail of light that was Yuuno broke off from the fight to join Nanoha. Fate wanted to watch them go until there was no sign left, but that took surprisingly little time. They flew straight up into the sky, disappearing beyond the clouds in a sonic boom.

_Orbital flight, _she thought, remembering something Nanoha had once told her. _Without the atmosphere in the way, Nanoha and Yuuno can fly as fast as they want…_

Shaking her head, she turned towards the tripods. There was a good number of them on the ground now, but some were still walking about, and there seemed to be some kind of strange, disgustingly organic structure growing from one of the meteors. "Arf, watch over the barrier and tell me immediately if you need help," Fate said, taking control. "Alisa, Suzuka, cover me. Hayate and the others can take care of the tripods, let's take down that tower. I don't know what that thing is, but I don't think it's good news."

"Aye-aye, Black Reaper-chan!" Alisa said. Fate thought she looked very strange in a white and pink version of Nanoha's barrier jacket.

"We're with you, Fate-chan!" Suzuka chirped. She took a deep breath, letting Hercules's spirit unravel, beginning again. They had such strange magic, almost unique. "_In the last, lorn fight against the fall of long night, the mountains stand guard, and the dead shall be ward, for the grave is no bar to my call! Spirit of Gilgamesh of Uruk, I summon thee! ETERNITY!"_

There was a light and a ripple, and for a moment the familiar form of a tall, muscular man was superimposed over Suzuka's features, before it seemed to settle over her body, leaving her clad in a different kind of loin cloth, red tattoos tracing lines over her torso as a chain hung from her waist. Suzuka turned red in embarrassment, crossing her arms over her chest. "Fate-chan!" Suzuka begged. "Cape! Please?"

"Oh, don't worry Suzuka-chan, all the boys are gone," Alisa said.

Fate sighed and took off her cape to lend to the other girl. She hoped Nanoha got back soon. She always felt out of her depth handling these Magical Girl things…

….

Night had fallen upon the island of Themyscira, home of the Amazons. In one of its rarely-walked halls, which literally no man has ever laid eyes upon, a figure crept. Technically, she had no reason to creep. These halls were her home, after all, and she had every right to be there. But for the intention in her heart, it was a night and time for creeping. Her feet made not sound as they touched the marble floors. Her feet did not touch the marble floors at all.

In a chamber bathed in moonlight, upon its high dais, the statue of Athena, goddess of war and wisdom– because goddesses liked a joke as much as anybody– loomed golden, bathed in the light of her sister Artemis and Selene. Amazons were careful about their goddesses. The figure climbed the golden stairs that led to the feet of Athena. There, positioned in the light as if as if it had been staged, was her mother's armor. The ear-studs, shaped fancifully liked stars. The silver bracelets, so like her own common steel ones, once a memory of a vile betrayal, and now weapon and a reminder. The golden lasso, woven from strands from the girdle of the Earth Goddess herself, gifted in one of her more lucid times. Whispers said those times were well past now, and that the Mother Of All was mad, and spoke only of the murder of the world of men, when she spoke at all.

And then there were the golden belt and the armor. Though the armor was strange, long blue hoses that seemed meant for the legs and what looked like a tube for the upper body, seemingly made of leather, it was said to offer great protection. Its design was very strange, as if it had shrunk in the centuries since it had last been used, and she almost reconsidered taking it. After all, how could it fit? But though it clung to her like a second skin, she found it fit quite well, even though the sensation of it touching _every_ part of her was a pit disconcerting. The metal front-piece of the armor, curved and meant to offer support, fit perfectly well, and even seemed a bit loose. Well, that was to be expected. She was smaller than her mother, after all. It made her feel more naked than when she was naked, which shouldn't be possible.

She found the red and white boots at the back of the altar, well-maintained but out of sight. Apparently shoes weren't meant to be on display.

And finally, there was the circlet, gold and marked with a simple red star. She almost left that behind, but took it anyway. After all, if she was going to do this, then she would do all of it.

When she'd slid her dagger into her boot and felt she was ready, she took the sack she had brought along and began to don the _other_ armor. Magic armor or no, it would be… _unwise_ to rely on an armor stolen from a temple of the gods. That was just _asking_ for trouble. Metal greaves for her legs, emblazoned with the eagle of Zeus. A proper breastplate of armor, the eagle in gold with a paired leather kilt. She hung the golden lasso at her right hip, opposite the short, simple blade at her left. It was her own practice blade, not one of the ancient weapons of great power. There were more guards in the armory than at the temple. After all, what fool would steal from the altar of Athena herself?

She tried not to think of the stories of what Athena had done to those foolish enough to dishonor her. She wished to be neither a spider nor a gorgon.

Shaking her head, she reached into the sack one last time, pulling out the round metal shield, and was surprised to find it empty. Damn it, she _had_ forgotten the helmet after all. Well, she had not time to get another one. It would be just her luck if someone came for a late night offering and spotted her here. She would just have to go without one.

For a moment, the enormity of what she was going to do fell upon her. For no more than some ill omens in the sky, she would steal the sacred armor from the temple of the goddess, defy the orders of her mother the queen, leave her home, leave paradise, for… what? A desire to 'save' Man's World, which her sisters and mother spoke of with suck pity and revulsion and hate and contempt and dismissal…

… and wistfulness. Longing. Silent memories. Some, when they were really, _really__**, really**_ drunk and didn't realize Diana was around, even spoke fondly of it, of the challenges to face and powerful warriors and monsters to fight. Artemis tended to get in _so_ much trouble for that. Sometimes even her mother spoke of it as not being the next best thing to Tartarus itself.

Was it truly so horrible, to bring about such remembrances in her sisters who had turned their backs upon it?

She looked up at the golden face of the goddess, and had to be honest with herself. For all her talk of omens and dark hours, what she truly waned was to _see_. To walk the forbidden land on which stood mount Olympus itself. To battle the monsters that roamed it. To, in a way, find out what the big deal was.

And yet, what if it was nothing? Could she truly turn her back in what all Amazon's knew was the greatest place short of the Fields of Elysium and the Islands of the Blessed themselves for… curiosity?

"Great goddess," she prayed. "Though I am unworthy of your blessing, I beg your counsel and your wisdom. Help me see my course. Help me…"

_Help me…_

It had, so far, been a perfectly ordinary day for Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta. Get up, break her fast, train in the arts of the Amazons, have midday meal, ride with her mother, see ill omens in the sky. And now, as she prayed, she heard a voice, not calling her name, but calling for her aid. With it came a vision of a place far, far from this island, of a land to the far reaches of the setting sun, with great mountains covered in white…

Her eyes snapped open. Above, the face of Athena seemed to stare down serenely at her. It seemed… acquiescent.

She bowed. "Thank you, great Athena," she said.

She had heard all her life how she was not like other Amazons. About how her mother had sculpted her from clay and how the goddesses had breathed in her life. Her sisters had told her how she was so much stronger, so much swifter, so much tougher than they, about how she healed so quickly and could speak to the beasts of the island. She tended to forget that last one. It made it so difficult to hunt. And the one, final gift that no Amazon had, the one she, and likely her mother, had long since realized was one perfectly suited for one thing: to leave this island.

She rose in the air, like the wind itself, and followed the vision that had given her answer.

….

**- To be continued…**

….

A/N: I'm eager to get to the Rider/Diana interactions…

Please review, C&C welcome.

Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.


	3. Secretive Origins, Part 2

A/N: Warning! This chapter contains as much bromance and platonicity as I could humanly stuff into it. Might be poisonous to diehard shippers. Tophuko forever. Proceed with caution.

…

Takamachi Nanoha of 2814: LeaguerS

by Shadow Crystal Mage

Chapter 2: Secretive Origins, Part 2

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story. If I did… well, this would all be canon. WARNING: MAY CAUSE HEAD EXPLOSION!

….

They managed to get into the Batwing and in the air. Of course, it was hardly that easy. Strange, organic-looking fighters took to the air after them and there were too many of them for Batman to fight. The Batwing had hardly been built with dogfighting in mind. Well, with _that_ level of dogfighting in mind, anyway. They managed to evade most of the red beams the fighters shot at them through shear gut-wrenching evasive maneuvers, but it was only a matter of time before one clipped their wing. Literally, in this case. He could have sworn he saw the sheared-off tip go flying past as they tumbled through the air… and stopped abruptly as green light shone through the windows.

"What happened?" he said on reflex.

"Help has arrived," J'onn said from the back seat.

Above, Yuuno began to gently lower the damaged Batwing, ignoring the crimson beams of energy the white fighters shot harmlessly at his shields and the shields he'd wrapped around the plane. A few feet above, he heard Nanoha coughing. "Now, everyone, if you'd all just land and stop shooting, we can sort all this out in a timely manner… seriously, stop shooting, I'm sure we can… I'm warning you, if you persist in these aggressive and attacks, I will be forced to take action… you're already guilty of invasion, destruction of private and government property, illegal atmospheric entry… AH! You almost hit that deer! Okay, that's it, no more nice Green Lantern-chan!"

Yuuno saw the entire valley below them light up green with explosions as he set the Batwing on a stretch of flat ground, than for security's sake slapped a protective bubble over it. When he looked up, Nanoha wasn't alone in the aerial fight. A winged woman– a relative of AngelGARd's, perhaps?– with a crackling electric mace was flying recklessly between the fighters, slamming her weapon hard at them and causing explosions. Superman was physically manhandling the things, ramming into them like a missile or grabbing them and swinging them around to hit other fighters. They were likely was also the reason there _were_ still fighters around, since it meant Nanoha couldn't blow them up in a second indiscriminate pass. His partner herself was flying around surrounded by little green constructs all shooting at fighters in all directions while she launched giant cutting discs, chainsaws and flying sharks at them. Yuuno was reminded of that silly 'Sharknado' movie.

He double-checked the barrier zone he had made to protect the area before he leapt into the air, sending beams and other slightly more imaginative things at the fighters. Yuuno tried to take prisoners but it was so hard when they seemed to insist on blowing themselves up. He'd put two in bubbles but gave it up after they kept trying to shoot their way out and ended up exploding.

One by one, the fighters fell. Yuuno kept an eye on the winged woman. She was pretty agile but he worried she might not be fast enough to avoid the blasts being sent her way. Yuuno saw her get caught in the blast wave of an explosion and fall out of the sky. He turned and rushed toward her, hoping she was all right– that had looked like a nasty fall, but from out of nowhere a figure in armor landed in front of her even as a fighter attacked shooting red beams at the two women. The new woman's arms blurred, and Yuuno was surprised to see the red beams go bouncing off as if reflected. Several of the beams bounced right back, striking the fighter and making it explode. Yuuno snapped a protective bubble around the two women and the ledge and cliff they were on as the fighter slammed out of control and crashed. The stranger raised her sword in salute to him in acknowledgment and he waved back.

The fight was over soon after that. Everyone began moving to regroup towards where Yuuno had put the Batwing as a red streak blurred across the land. The protective bubble was still there, though a little snow, rock and debris had piled up on top of it. Yuuno flipped the shields over, letting all the stuff piled up fall over the cliff.

"Hey Bats!" Yuuno heard as a he landed some distance away from the tall, imposing figure some distance from the plane. He almost thought it was Illya in Berserker mode, until he realized it wasn't anywhere near so nightmare-inducing. A red blur resolved itself into a red-clad figure holding a large piece of metal. "I think you dropped this!" the figure said.

As the others began to land, Yuuno finally began to identify them. He only really knew Superman, but he hadn't met with him much since earlier that year when Nanoha had come out to her parents… that she was Green Lantern. He didn't know the others, but they wore the tight clothes and capes he'd been told were the fashion among American Mahou Shoujo. No, wait, that wasn't what they called their vigilantes, wasn't it? What was it again? Science squads? No, wait, that was for those backed by the Japanese government. Superheroes, that was it.

"Is everyone all right?" Nanoha called out as soon as she was down. "Does anyone need medical attention? Bandages? Disinfectant?"

"We're fine, Green Lantern," Superman said. The armored woman landed next to him, a round shield strapped to one arm, a sword in the other, which she immediately sheathed. He nodded at the man in red. "Flash. Nice to see you."

Flash wasn't listening. Instead, a wide smile spread across his face at the sight of the armored… no, not a woman. He handed Batman the cut-off wing without looking. "Whoa. Where have you been all my life?" he said.

Yuuno stared. Had he been… hitting on her? Wow. He thought it was the women who hit on the men in this planet. At least, that was the impression he'd always gotten. Clearly, that was wrong.

"Themyscira," the tall girl replied.

Apparently, Flash didn't know what that meant. "Huh?" he said eloquently.

"Themyscira," Nanoha read from her ring. "Hidden island constructed and maintained by the god-class entities known as the Olympians as a refuge for the Amazons, a race of immortal female warriors originating from the lands around the Mediterranean."

Everyone looked at her.

"It's in Ring-chan's reference section," she said helpfully as Yuuno paused to check his own ring. There was always something…

The tall girl nodded. Definitely still a girl. Her face still lacked the smoothness that came with adulthood, and her lean, muscular build reminded Yuuno of that ninja Ala Alba had, the really tall one… "It is as she says," she said. "I am Diana, Princess of the Amazons."

"Pinch me, I must be dreaming," Flash said. Superman rolled his eyes and elbowed him.

"Themyscira is protected by the gods," Diana said. "But I could not idly stand by with such ill omens of danger threatening the world."

Nanoha perked up. "Oh, did you get a vision calling for help too?"

She nodded. "Yes, I did."

"Do you have any magic?" Nanoha continued eagerly.

"Uh, yes…" Diana said.

"Dibs!" Nanoha cheerfully declared towards Superman. "She's one of us, I call dibs on her first!"

"Hey, no fair!" Flash protested. "I wanted to call dibs first! I demand a re-dib! I was not prepared to call dibs!" A beat. "What are we calling dibs for, anyway?"

"I call dibs to make friends with her!" Nanoha said. "The visions in my head owe me a new friend, and I'm calling dibs on her!"

"I want to make friends with her!" Flash said as a confused Diana looked back and forth between them.

"Look, there's no need to fight you two," Superman said patiently. "You can _both_ make friends with her."

Green Lantern and Flash looked at each other critically, then brightened. "Yeah, that's true!" Nanoha said happily. "Plenty of friendship for everyone."

"True, true," Flash said, nodding sagely. "I always say you should be greedy when it comes to friends. There are always enough friends to go around, so we should all share."

The two nodded as if in agreement while everyone stared at them like they were nuts. Then they turned to Diana, both smiling brightly. "Hi!" they said. "Wanna be friends?"

"What do you mean… one of you?" Diana asked cautiously.

"You said you were a princess and you had magic," Nanoha explained. "Therefore, you are automatically counted as a Mahou Shoujo, just like me!"

Diana blinked. "Is that… good?"

"It's what you want it to be!" Nanoha said. "But it means there'll be a lot of people who'll want to meet you and say hi and make friends with you."

"Will someone _please_ explain what's going on here?" the winged woman said, looking mildly ill at all the friendship talk.

Superman and the dark-cloaked figure both looked at the green person.

"My name is J'onn J'onnz," he began.

…

Yuuno had to admit, it was one of the best examples of exposition he'd ever heard. There were no random tangents or anyone derailing the conversation or anything. A pity there were no visual aids.

"They are known as the pale ones of the under-darkness," J'onn told them. "They, too, are from my native Ma'aleca'andra. Though stories of them have oft been told for countless ages, since the birth of our civilization, we first truly encountered them a thousand of your Earth years ago. Our civilization was at the height of its peace and prosperity. And then, _they_ arose from out of the ground and deep caverns. Who and what they were, no one knew, but they were determined to slay us all. We were a peaceful people and the taking of any life was abhorrent to all but the most depraved madmen, but we quickly learned the ways of war."

Off to the side, Nanoha has nodding knowingly, and Yuuno wondered if the Green Lantern Corps had some kind of checklist for stuff like this. He wouldn't put it past them. Nanoha seemed to be taking down notes too, if the little green screen next to her with writing appearing on it was any indicator. He wondered if was supposed to be doing that too…

Hold on, he should! He was an archaeologist after all, and this was a new civilization! Frantically he tried to get the ring to discretely start taking notes too.

"For centuries, the battles raged on," J'onn continued. "Every trace of our once-great civilization was obliterated as the great soul of our planet slumbered. We fought valiantly, but the pale ones were parasites that fed upon our life force. Those they did not kill, they kept as batteries until all life was drained from them. They absorbed our shapechanging and mental abilities as they fed upon us. As we grew weaker, they grew stronger, more monstrous. Finally, a small group of survivors planned one final, desperate attack. At their underground stronghold, we unleashed a devastating attack, a powerful nerve gas that paralyzed them. The attack was successful, but the cost was dear. I was the only survivor. The last of my kind."

At those words, Superman stirred slightly. Yuuno glanced sideways at him, but his face was unreadable.

"I sealed their citadel to keep them in a constant state of suspended animation. For over five hundred years, I stood guard over them. And then, while I was in a hibernation cycle, astronauts from earth unsealed the stronghold and accidentally revived the invaders." The look he turned towards everyone was, Yuuno was surprised to see, only mildly accusing.

"Wait!" Flash interjected. "Those astronauts never said anything about finding life on Mars."

"Because it's very well hidden," Nanoha said. "But there have been people on Earth who've known about life on Mars for the past three thousand years. I suppose someone decided it should be classified."

Everyone glanced at her.

"It's complicated," she said. "And I'm pretty sure the life I mean isn't J'onn's people."

"With all my people dead, the pale ones had no one else to feed upon," J'onn said. "So they have revived the ancient starfarer artifacts and set their sights upon your world. I narrowly escaped and came here to warn your world of the coming danger, but it was captured and held against my will, ironically in fear that I was the very thing I came to warn against. While I was held captive, the pale ones sent advanced agents to diable your world's defenses."

"That's why they sabotaged the deep space monitoring network," Batman said. "So we couldn't detect their activities."

"This is my fault," Nanoha said. "I should have kept a closer eye on the rest of the solar system."

"You can blame yourself later," Yuuno said. "From the sound of it, we don't have time right now. We have to stop this before it's too late!"

"It may already be too late," J'onn said.

In the distance, thunder rolled.

"It has begun," he said.

"I don't know how it is where you come from, but around here, those are very ominous words," Hawkgirl said. "What's begun?"

"The news feeds say something just grew out of the meteor in Metropolis," Nanoha said, a screen floating in front of her showing a news channel. "It's some kind of dark and ominous evil tower!"

Flash looked over her shoulder at the black and green feed. Aside from the color, it was all in HD. "Yup, that's a dark and ominous evil tower all right," he said knowledgeably. "All it needs is a giant flaming eye or a crazy wizard. What's it for?"

"The pale ones are nocturnal," J'onn said. "Their beachhead facilities contain factories meant to generate an opaque ionized cloud that will spread across the atmosphere, allowing them to control sunlight. They aim to blot out the sun so they can live in perpetual darkness. It is likely at the same structures are growing in other landing sites."

"Whoa. And I thought air pollution was bad," Flash said.

"Can't we just make another batch of that nerve gas?" Yuuno asked.

"Unfortunately, no," J'onn said. "The gas can only be made form a rare plant. I brought a sample with me, but it was destroyed when I was captured."

"Do you know the formula?" Nanoha asked, floating over towards him. "I can synthesize a batch if I knew what I was going for."

"No. I am sorry," J'onn said. "While I know enough to synthesize it from a sample, it was our team's chemical specialist who synthesized the toxin."

"So… what's plan B?" Flash asked.

"We need to take out those… 'factories'," Diana said. "If it is a facility that the enemy wishes installed immediately, then it follows we can greatly hinder their advance if we keep them from doing so."

"She's right," Hawkgirl said, hefting her mace. "If those factories stay, then they'll be able to terraform this planet to better suit them. From the looks of it, they've already got it too much their way as it is."

"Tactically, we'll have multiple objectives," Batman said. "We need to know how many of these factories there are."

"52," Yuuno said.

Everyone looked at him as Nanoha and Flash stopped their bickering.

He held up his ring, above which was projected a diagram of the earth, various places marked with arrows. "I had my ring parse through all the news channels it could and check for appearances of towers," he said. "They're mostly in major cities, but we have a couple in the rainforests, parts of Africa and one in Antarctica. None in Japan though, and the one in Kansas just went down. I think that might be Supergirl."

"Yes!" Nanoha cheered, punching her fist in the air. "Go United Magical Girl Association!"

….

In Tokyo, Gilgamesh frowned. "I feel I'm being snubbed somehow."

"It's just your imagination," Tuxedo Kamen said. "There sure are a lot of meteors, aren't there? You'd think Green Lantern-chan would tell us about this sort of thing…"

….

"How are we going to handle 52 towers?" Flash asked. "Ents?"

"I'll make a few calls," Nanoha said. "If Japan is mostly clear, that means there are people who are free to move out. Plus I know a few people who can handle the other places…" There was a beat. "Superman, do you know another number for Doctor Fate? I keep getting their answering machine."

"Then we can handle the towers no one else can get to in time," Yuuno suggested. "Maybe we can work out how to take them down. And if we screw up and it inevitably explodes, at least they'll be away from people."

"'Inevitably explodes'?" Hawkgirl repeated.

"I've learned that everything tends to explode on this planet," Yuuno said. "Even your canned drinks explode."

"Only if you shake it," Nanoha said.

"Yes, well, that would have been nice to know _before_ I opened the can," Yuuno said

"I said I was sorry!"

"Will you two be quiet!" Batman snapped.

"Hey, easy on the sidekicks, Bats," Flash said.

Yuuno blinked. "Sidekick?"

"He's not my sidekick!" Nanoha said huffily. "Ferret Lantern and I are equal partners! Sidekicks are outmoded and archaic."

"I thought we agreed to stop using that name?" Yuuno said.

"Enough of this," Superman said. "We need to get going. Green Lantern, how many people do you think you can send after the other towers."

Nanoha did some quick figuring. "At least three groups and maybe three other people, and I can probably ask for enough support to get them teleport capable enough to hit a lot of targets. None of them would be suitable for the Antarctic though, so some of us would have to go after that. I'll get them on standby and send them on their way as soon as we figure out the safest way to take down a tower."

"Then let's split up," Superman said.

"Dibs on new friend!" Nanoha and Flash chorused. "No, I called bids first! No, I did! No, I did! Stop copying me!"

Superman and Yuuno facepalmed.

"Is everyone on this planet like that?" J'onn asked stoically.

"It depends on who you ask," Yuuno said.

J'onn stood, silent.

"It's okay, you can say we're doomed," Yuuno said gently. "I'm thinking it too, but you really look like you want to say it, so I'll let you go first."

J'onn gave him a flat look.

"Yes, I realize," Yuuno sighed. "I didn't used to be like this, but it seems to be infectious. My friend calls it the Crazy Earth People Effect."

"I called dibs first! I said it first! Me! No, me!"

"Perhaps I should have stayed at home after all," Diana said.

….

Flash sighed as he ran across the water. "I really wanted to team up with the hot Amazon."

"I don't think she was especially hot," Nanoha said, flying next to him. "Actually, she might have been pretty cold. I should have offered her a blanket. That was pretty rude of me to just leave her like that in the snow." She sighed too.

There was silence broken only by the lapping waves and the sound barrier breaking into teeny tiny pieces around them.

"So, I'm Green Lantern," Nanoha said cheerfully. She wasn't one to stay depressed, after all.

"Name's the Flash," Flash said, equally cheerfully. "So, friends?"

"Friends!" Nanoha confirmed. She looked down at where he was running on the water. "Wow, you're REALLY fast!"

"Fastest man alive," he said proudly.

"Bet you're not as fast a Superman," she said.

"Oh, haven't you heard?" he said. "Supes and I ran a race around the world once."

She frowned cutely. "I think I remember that one. But no one won, right? Someone with a crazy weather machine interrupted it."

"Well, that was the first race," Flash said. "The one we had after that…"

"Well, who won?" Nanoha asked.

He smirked. "Why don't you ask Superman."

She pouted cutely at him. Well, she was trying to frown, but that was what came across. "You lost, didn't you?"

"Like I said, you have to ask Superman," Flash said breezily.

"All right, I will!" Nanoha declared huffily. Then, "So, do you have specially-made shoes or something? I mean, wouldn't your feet be wet by now? I know mine get wet if I so much as step on a puddle."

"Yeah, good shoes are pretty hard to find," Flash admitted. "I had to learn to make these myself and sometimes I get it wrong and the heel starts flapping, which is really embarrassing…"

"I know this girl in who'd probably be able to make the perfect shoes for you," Nanoha said. "She usually does clothes, but if I ask nicely I'm sure she wouldn't mind making you some proper running shoes. Or proper boots. Those look like you just sewed on some yellow spandex on the end of some sneakers and painted the whole thing yellow."

"Hey, it's hard to make fancy stuff on my salary!" Flash said. "I'll have you know my entire costume is pretty cool! I can shrink it all so it fits in my ring."

Nanoha blinked. "What, boots too?"

"Boots too," Flash said proudly.

"Even those pointy things on your head?"

"Well… not those, I have to keep those in my pocket," he admitted. "But yeah, the rest fits in a little ring!"

"That's so cool!"

"I know, right?" Flash grinned. "You know, I like you, little girl. What'd you say your name was again?"

"Green Lantern!" Nanoha chirped. "I usually work from Japan, so I'm not surprised you haven't really heard of me. Actually, my friend's called Green Lantern too."

"Green Lantern two? What, are you guys numbered or something?"

"Huh?"

"What?"

They soon hit ice and snow, and were forced to slow down to speeds that didn't basically set off a bomb behind them as they moved, with Nanoha keeping Flash warm with her ring ("Toasty!"). Nanoha had volunteered for the Antarctic one on the basis that she was free to try anything there as long as she didn't hurt any penguins. Plus, she might see a penguin!

They slowed considerably when Nanoha detected they were close to their target, and she picked up Flash and flew him the rest of the way to minimize noise, hiding them under a hologram. With all the colors they wore, they stood out like targets against the snow otherwise. The factory was already starting to spew smoke when they came in sight of it, with three tripods standing around it patrolling in circles.

"There it is," Nanoha said. Leaning over the kotatsu she'd set up, she examined the area. The meteor had crashed in a relatively flat spot, though a crater spread out from the point of landing now. The tower was easy to spot, standing out in the landscape as a black smear. "Ugly, isn't it?"

"Kinda looks like it's made from clay," Flash agreed. "Or something from a really sick and twisted lava lamp. This table is awesome, by the way. So comfy…"

"They're usually best when you're eating mandarin oranges," Nanoha said.

"I'll keep that in mind," Flash said. He looked over at the tower and the tripods. "Come, put me down so we can go and kick their butts!"

"Not yet!" Nanoha said. "We need to do something important first."

"What's that?" Flash asked impatiently.

"We need to make sure there aren't any poor penguins nearby who might get hurt!" Nanoha said passionately.

Flash paused and considered this, then nodded. "Yeah, innocent penguins have nothing to do with this. As superheroes, we can't let cute flightless birds be caught in the crossfire. Then we kick their butts?"

"We kick it _so_ hard," Nanoha agreed. She raised a fist, her ring shining dangerously and lighting up her face. "No one messes with our planet!"

Flash nodded. "Yeah! We mess it up just fine by ourselves!"

"Which is a bad thing!"

"Yeah, but at least we only do it accident. Well, most of the time it's by accident!"

"But someday, we'll get our act together and stop!" Nanoha avowed.

"Eventually!" Flash agreed.

They paused.

"That's a bit depressing," Flash said.

"Yeah," Nanoha agreed with a sigh. "Check for penguins?"

"Check for penguins," Flash agreed. "Then…"

"KICK BUTT!" they chorused.

At that point, the tripods started shooting them because they were so loud.

….

Superman had only met Hawkgirl a couple of times. He'd offered to help her find a way back to her people, but as with many things, he was still working on that. Fortunately, she seemed to be in no hurry to leave, and appeared to have adjusted quite well to life on her new planet of residence.

Hawkgirl let out a primordial scream of raging fury as she hammered relentlessly at the downed tripod with her energy mace.

Superman wondered if Yuuno's friends were right and if there was something in the planet that made people violent and crazy. No, that was silly. He'd lived here for years, and he was fine…

His mind deliberately glossed over any thought of Gotham City.

Ripping off a fallen tripod's leg, he threw it at the side of the tower in Metropolis. "Hawkgirl, follow me!" he called, possibly redundantly, but she seemed to have been _really_ enjoying hitting that fallen tripod thing. He flew through the hole, finding himself inside the smoke factory. Was it just him, or did it seem bigger on the inside? Likely it was just the creepily organic décor messing with his sense of scale. "Keep a sharp eye out," he said as he landed a moment to orient himself.

"I always do," she said. She sounded focused and confident.

He'd only taken a few steps forward when blaster fire came at them from somewhere above and to their left. He moved himself between them and Hawkgirl. "Stay back, I'll–"

Her animalistic scream cut him off as she flew past him, her wings flapping as she threw herself into the midst of the invaders, energy mace swinging. He had to duck as one of the invaders she had struck flew at him. It struck the wall– bulkhead? Membrane?– behind him and splattered all over like a rather disgusting chunk of modeling clay. Or possibly a ball of mud.

When he looked back, all the invaders were down in various states of splat. Hawkgirl was picking up one of their fallen blasters, examining it. She seemed to feel his gaze on her, and she gave him a challenging look. "What? They had it coming." She threw down the blaster, either not sure she could get it to work or just not wanting to use it. "Come on!"

There really wasn't anything in the planet, was there? He sighed and followed after her, wondering how the children were doing…

….

Yuuno peered through the leaves, watching as the tripods patrolled around the giant factory in the middle of the African plains. Already the skies had darkened from the smoke it was pouring out, obscuring the otherwise bright sunlight with an artificial cloud. It was also very hot and humid. Thank goodness for ring auras.

Diana, who did _not_ have a ring aura, was obviously feeling the full effects of the weather. "Hiding like cowards is not the Amazon way!" she said indignantly and slapped at the insects trying to bite at her.

"We're not hiding like cowards, we're hiding like ferrets," Yuuno said from under the shade of his hat. "Small and unnoticed until we're ready to make our move." Or get eaten by a predator higher up the food chain, but he didn't say that. "Besides, someone hiding like a coward has no intention to fight. We have every intention to fight, therefore we're not cowards, and hiding isn't cowardly."

The much taller girl sniffed. "Sophistry," she said, obviously not impressed.

"Last I checked, Amazons weren't known for suicide runs, they were known for being fierce warriors," Yuuno said, trying a different tack. "Even fierce warriors probably want to know which end of what they're attacking has the stuff most likely to get them killed. Unless your shield magically gets bigger?"

She gave him a dirty look. "You are a child," she said, not impressed. "What would you know about combat?"

"I know it's always safer to know as much of an enemy as you can if you want to get out of a fight alive," Yuuno snapped back, mildly annoyed at the ageist remark. Seriously, what was with everyone on this planet and their obsession with how many birthdays you've had?

"And how will we learn anything by sitting here and waiting?" Diana retorted.

"My ring is scanning the structure and the tripods," Yuuno said. "It's almost finished. Soon we'll know what we're up against and then…"

"Then what?" the man next to them asked.

Yuuno started, and drew back instinctively. Diana started and drew her sword to cleave his head off, possibly also instinctively.

From seemingly out of nowhere, a sword appeared, parrying Diana's blade. "No touching my husband," Yuuno heard translated through his ring as a shadowed figure appeared next to the man.

This was evidently not enough warning for Diana, who gave out a roar and charged the woman. The woman, her long hair shining golden even in the little light, darted sideways, luring Diana away from the man– her husband, evidently– taking advantage of her longer blade to parry Diana's blows.

Yuuno had frozen though, staring at the man in front of him. "Negi?-!" he said as sounds of violence came from the background.

The man smiled widely. "Close. How do you know my son?"

"Your so– Oh! You're Negi's dad!" Yuuno said in realization. "Nugi, right?"

"Nagi, actually. You're not some enemy of my son's, are you?" he said, suddenly smiling threateningly. "I can't keep you all straight…"

Yuuno waved his hands frantically. "No, no, we're friends! We're in the same club, in fact."

"_Reeeeeally?_" Nagi said, giving him an almost comical intense stare. "Prove it!"

Yuuno blinked. "How?"

That seemed to catch him up short. "Uh… tell me something only a friend of Negi's would know!"

Yuuno paused to consider as trees were cleaved apart behind them. He could hear Magister spells going off as the woman sent them at Diana. "Uh, Negi wears Bob the Builder boxer shorts?" he said, remembering that mission to get Negi's clothes back and steal his students'.

Nagi blinked. "He does?"

"Why are you asking me?" Yuuno said. "Shouldn't you know?"

"Well, I've kinda been gone for a while…" Nagi said, looking mildly embarrassed.

Yuuno facepalmed. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Oh, me and the wife were just passing through after helping a golden gorilla deal with this local warlord and his force of werehyenas when we saw the meteor come down, so we decided to check it out," Nagi said brightly as metal clashed behind them.

Yuuno glanced over his shoulder and blinked. "Evangeline?" he said, surprised.

"Hey!" Nagi said indignantly. "The mother of my child is _way_ hotter than some loli grandma!"

"Uh, shouldn't we stop them?" Yuuno said, surprised at all the damage Diana and Nagi's wife had been able to do in such a short conversation. They were rapidly losing cover from all the trees cut and blasted down. "I mean, the tripods might see us."

Nagi blinked blankly. "What tripods?"

At that point, the tripods started shooting them because they were so loud.

"This sort of stuff never happens to my partner!-!-!-!-!" Yuuno wailed.

_Somewhere, Nanoha sneezed. _

….

While J'onn had not really had a proper opportunity to observe a human before– he had not really been able to examine those who had captured him upon arrival, and he suspected they had quickly been replaced by infiltrators– his civilization had long observed theirs from a distance, using telescopic equipment, and later space-faring vessels. They had... well, to be honest, from what he had heard they were rather primitive and even a touch animalistic. His people's philosophers had charitably tried to put this down to the difficulties of living on their planet, with its mind-boggling hundreds of different species all apparently competing to try to eat each other and anything else that stood still for long enough. That was not even counting all the things that swam in the planet's great masses of water, unheard of in Ma'aleca'andra, where all the water was underground, kept by the great spirit of the world that had created his people. They would be a great people, the consensus seemed to be, if they'd just get over their seeming instinct to try and eat everything they could get their hands on, including things that weren't edible, like rocks from the ground and each other.

When he'd first been released, he'd had assumed the two individuals before him had been from the same species. They had looked physiologically identical except for their coloring, but on second look it had appeared that the 'coloring' was in fact some kind of artificial coating of some sort, the purpose of which he still wasn't exactly clear on. Was it a uniform? A symbol of rank? Office? Status? He had tried a gentle telepathic inquiry towards the two, but neither had reacted, and all he had heard were passively perceived concepts. The bright blue one had been concerned for J'onn, but also for his planet, while the dark one had been strongly suspicious. It was then that he finally recalled that these people were apparently not endowed with the same senses of mind that his people were.

He had needed to project more deliberately at them to begin to communicate, and by the way the darkly-colored one had reacted, this had been alarming. He had altered his mouth passages, trying to change it into something that would reproduce the sounds they were using to communicate, trying to finally put to use all the strange, bewildering thoughts he had managed to perceive through the stasis field that had crudely imprisoned his mind as well as his body, parsing it for the language they were speaking. He was glad to find his symbiote was still alive, prompting it to spread itself over him in a version of his old uniform of office, but in the apparent local fashion.

From then on, there had been one thing after another as he had been driven to send a call for help, knowing it risked bringing more danger to them if the pale ones managed to hear his cry and send more of their numbers after them. The decisions that came had been quick and necessary, as much rushed on his part as it had been with the strange collection of being his call had summoned. Though he hid it, even from himself, he knew that he was lost, on a strange world, with beings he did not understand but hoped he could rely upon, if only because they danger before them was to their world. Still, amidst all that, he had been gladdened.

Two of those he had manage to call were Green Lanterns. And very senior ones, if how slightly unhinged the latter puffy-looking one acted was any indicator. They, at least, understood and fully comprehended what he had said, though he suspected he would be asked to fill in many information forms later. The decision had been made to analyze the towers for weaknesses and if possible destroy them. The group so few, had split into pairs for safety, and he had been paired with the dark colored and frilled one who had been one of his initial rescuers.

It soon became clear that, if this planet had a hierarchy based on physical ability, then this being he had been paired with would be of very low standing. He could not fly, requiring a large and relatively loud vehicle to do so. Compared to the blue one called Superman, his senses were severely impaired. He was also, compared to the red one that had belatedly arrived, very slow, but perhaps that was not such a bad thing. The red one seemed a bit mentally delayed.

They had used the vehicle again to fly to their destination, one of the closer factory towers. It was time-consuming, especially since J'onn knew he could fly faster, but he had to admit that without the vehicle's instrumentation he might have gotten lost. The whole trip he was interrogated extensively on the pale ones' capabilities, especially likely security systems and the tactical doctrine they would use to protect their factory facilities. Perhaps this one was a mentally advanced caste with degenerated physical abilities?

They landed the vehicle some distance away from their destination. It had just begun production, so the smoke cover it had produced was still thin, but already the sunlight was waning. The tripods had deployed around it, patrolling and shooting most things that moved. No one noticed as Batman and J'onn entered the factory tower. He found himself impressed at this one's capabilities. Though J'onn himself was invisible and immaterial, Batman made as little noise as he did, entering the structure by creating an opening using some kind of liquid cryogenic agent to near-silently break a portion of the tower's wall and slipping through the small opening.

No one noticed as they passed. They were more quiet than the breeze, more unnoticed than the shadows. And then they reached the central core and the ion matrix crystal...

It made a very satisfying explosion.

….

Nanoha flew over the ocean, Flash running next to her.

"That was awesome!" she cried.

"_SO _awesome!" Flash agreed. "The way you made that giant robot…!"

"And you!" Nanoha made a shaking gesture with her arm. "All you did was _touch_ that thing and it exploded! Like a… a… a Super Vibrational Explosion Punch! No, wait, more like a… Fatal Destructive Resonance!"

"Ooh, cool name!" Flash said. "Gotta remember that one."

"Plus, we managed to get penguin selfies!" Nanoha cooed.

"Penguin selfies are awesome!" Flash agreed.

….

"They're close by," Hawkgirl said, looking around intently. "I can almost smell them."

"Relax, we're clear," Superman said. "I can't hear or smell anyone around except the two of us. Why are you always so eager to fight?"

"Thanagarians are proud warriors," Hawkgirl said. "We never give up, we never surrender. We strike first or die."

A blast of energy narrowly missed her, flying through the space between them. They turned to find a small group of the invaders hurriedly turning away and running down a tunnel.

"No one around, huh?" Hawkgirl said dryly as she flew after them.

"Well, I'm not very good with smell…" Superman said sheepishly as he followed. Why weren't they standing their ground? The aliens– well, _other_ aliens– had been standing their ground before, so why…?

The tunnel oozed closed just as Hawkgirl got to it, and she stopped short, landing abruptly lest she slam into it. Behind him, Superman heard a rather disgusting noise, and turned to find the way behind them blocked.

From the wall nearest to her, some sort of yellow gas gushed into Hawkgirl's face. She immediately started coughing, dropping her mace and falling to her knees as she clawed at her throat.

"Hang on, Hawkgirl!" Superman said, turning around and reaching over to the closed portal behind him to try and rip it open. "I'll–"

He cried out in pain as electricity suddenly coursed through him in absurd amounts, certainly more than enough to send one back in time provided one were going at 88 miles an hour and had a flux capacitor. He fell, stunned, and breathed in the gas…

….

Yuuno looked at the huge crater and sighed, glad he'd been able to put up a barrier just in time. "Well," he said in the sudden silence as the aftershocks of Khilipl Astrape died down. "I'd say that's definitely one way to bring one of these things down." Next to him, Diana and Arika nodded, the former stunned, the latter exasperated.

On top of what was left of, well, _anything_, Nagi let out a howl of triumph. "Oh _yeah_! I AM THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD!"

Arika sighed. "Excuse me, I have to collect my husband," she said, sounding both fond and annoyed.

"Amazing," Diana breathed. "To think that he could call upon the power of Zeus himself… is he a great demigod?"

"Uh, not that I know of," Yuuno said as Arika reached over to unceremoniously pull at her husband's ear. "Though it might explain a few things about the family…" He sighed. "Well, one way or another we've accomplished the mission. Let's meet back with the others…"

Diana frowned. "This battle… it was nothing like what my sisters described. Where is the glory, the honor? The long recitations of one's lineage and their great deeds, one's town of birth and the makers of your sword, shield, boots and armor?"

"Yes, real life is like that," Yuuno said. "You need to have a lot of battle experience to be able to give the long recitations. It's not as easy as people make it out to be. Believe me, I've tried."

….

The world was in chaos. Gaia, the spirit of the earth, could no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She sent five magic rings to five special young people…

…

(We apologize for the utter stupidity of the preceding paragraph. The person responsible has been sacked.)

The world was in chaos. In many of the major cities of the world, giant tripods roamed, spreading fear and destruction… but in an orderly manner. Armies mobilized, but they were no match for the alien invaders advanced technology, despite all the effort they had put into weapons research since the last time this happened a year ago. People wailed, for they had never expected something like this to happen in their lifetime. For others, it was just another day in the big city, except with lasers.

And the various superheroes and Puella Magi– those who felt like doing anything– had their hands full.

In Uminari, Alisa panted, leaning against a convenient tree as the last of the tripod things was torn apart by the wing of the Unbreakable Dark, who preferred to be called Yuri. "Yeah!" she said wearily, letting go of Sakura's magic and feeling her barrier jacket dissolve into her regular clothes. "That's how we do things in Uminari, bitches!"

Suzuka winced slightly at the language as she demurely sat down next to her. "Well, it looks like we're done," she said, sounding relieved. "I wonder what's keeping Nanoha-chan?"

Alisa smirked. "Maybe she got distracted by something," she said.

"I hope not," Fate said, coming down to land next to them. "Nanoha-chan's not the kind to be distracted by little things."

There were three beeps, one after the armor. Everyone blinked as they reached for their cellphones and flipped them open. Inside were emails and attached pictures from Nanoha. Curious, they opened the message.

Inside were pictures of Nanoha posing with penguins.

"SHE DITCHED US TO TAKE PENGUIN SELFIES?" Alisa cried. "THAT BITCH! SHE COULD HAVE TAKEN US ALONG!"

"This is so selfish!" Suzuka said, agreeing for once. "I've always wanted to see a penguin!"

Fate sweatdropped. "Um, guys, there _is_ a message attached…" she said, even as she scrolled down the quite frankly adorable pictures of Nanoha standing and sitting next to penguins.

They read.

"I think this is when we start calling the Association…" Fate said, beginning to compose a pre-defined message to call a general alert.

….

The Sailor Senshi sat around Makoto's apartment in various attitudes of repose, enjoying the relatively quiet day broken only by the occasional loud thump. Why anyone would be sending up fireworks in the middle of the day, they had no idea. Usagi and Minako were reclining as they read their latest manga, while Haruka and Hotaru were watching old Kamen Rider episodes. Ami and Michiru were discussing their swim times as Makoto and Rei did each other's nails. Setsuna was huddled at one end of the sofa, using her phone to check on the progress of her many online petitions to have Pluto redeclared a planet as the two cats curled up next to each other.

When her phone beeped to indicate she'd gotten a message, she'd made an annoyed sound. When everyone else's phones went off at about the same time, the rest of the room groaned. They knew what that meant. Automated message. That was never fun. No one ever used the automated messages to send up invites for parties at the bottle resort, for one thing.

"What's it say?" Rei asked, blowing frantically on her nails even as she resigned herself to another ruined nail job.

"…" Haruka said. "Setsuna, did you know there was going to be an alien invasion today?"

Makoto groaned. "Is it another dark kingdom? Dark baron? Dark fiefdom? Dark communists? Well, there goes my nerves for the rest of the year…Again."

"It's not a dark kingdom, it's an alien invasion," Ami said, reading quicker than any of them. "Apparently, with space ships and invading robots and everything."

Usagi frowned as another loud thump reverberated through the air. "Are you sure? I mean, wouldn't that kind of thing be obvious? These things are always attacking Tokyo and destroying Tokyo Tower. You'd think we'd hear it happening, even over all these fireworks that have been going off all day."

There was a beat

"Those aren't fireworks, are they?" Minako said.

Haruka quickly switched the TV from the video player to a news channel.

"–enes of destruction around the world as more of the alien tripod walkers land," the American newscaster for Metro News Ichi said as her hair blew wildly against the wind machine and the monkey in the diaper threw marshmallows at her. "Armed forces and superheroes are valiantly fighting to protect our world against the dread menace. Reports have come in of strong resistance in Mahora City, Mitakihara City and Kyoto, while the cities of Uminari and Fuyuki are apparently untouched thanks to the efforts of their Mahou Shoujo and a gigantic blue dome has encompassed Tomoeda. In Misaki, a giant meido robot has apparently appeared from out of nowhere and is battling the invaders using standard rocket punch weaponry and breast flamethrowers. Meanwhile, our own Tokyo remains untouched thanks to the dedicated efforts of our own heroes, allowing the JSDF and Big Science Action to mobilize elsewhere. In other news, the mayor of Tokyo has decried giant robot breast weapons to be lewd and leading to unhealthy thinking in our youths. He has claimed to have already begun work on drafting a bill to make giant robotic breast weaponry illegal to use in Tokyo…"

The news went on as silence descended in the Kino living room.

"If anyone asks, we knew right away and have been defending the city all morning, okay?" Usagi said.

There were embarrassed coughs before they all proceeded to transform.

….

It was quiet in space. _Too_ quiet.

"I hate feeling helpless like this," soon-to-be-retired Admiral Lindy Harlaown said, sipping nervously from her over-sugared cup of green tea. It was a mark of the seriousness of the situation that Amy didn't so much as give her a disapproving look. The _Asura_ lay in orbit above the planet, slunted slightly sideways dimensionally to remain undetectable. "Any word on the reinforcements?"

"Special Community Service recruit Shamal is en route to the main office for relay here," Allex reported. "Special Community Service recruit Vita is still in the middle of her Lost Logia pacification assignment, but she reports she will have, and I quote, 'beaten the crap out of it' within half an hour. Special Community Service recruits Zafira and Signum are still undercover for the illegal familiar prostitution ring sting, which is scheduled to commence in two hours. And Enforcer Chrono is apparently negotiating a traffic ticket. He reports he'll be here soon provided he doesn't murder anyone."

"That's our noble Enforcer," Amy chirped, and there a lightening of the mood as the bridge crew chuckled.

"Admiral!" Landy cried. "Sensors are detecting an enormous object approaching the planet!"

That killed the mirth. "Onscreen!" Lindy ordered, setting her teacup down.

The shape appeared on the ship's holographic monitors as the small but growing asymmetrical structure approached the planet.

"Ew…" Amy said, even as her fingers flew over the touch controls, calling up scans and readings. "It looks like it's the same kind of pseudo-organic morphic design as the ones that landed. We're picking up some kind of ionic fusion reading and…" she sighed, "yet _another _barely-known magic type we're not properly calibrated to read. Honestly, how much weird magic does this crappy dimensional space have?"

"Temper, officer Limietta," Lindy said, although she was thinking the same thing. "Is it on the planetary index?"

Amy checked them blinked. "It… is? A similar energy was filed a couple of months ago, during the Book of Darkness case."

"Notify our allies on the ground," Lindy said. "Technically, this is their problem. Unless we receive orders or a request for assistance, our hands are tied." Lindy smoothly sat down on her chair. "In the meantime, why don't we have the crew run some drills. Just to keep their hand in."

"The kind of drills that mean we have to warm up the guns and clear the decks for the Arc-en-Ciel?" Amy said, straight-faced.

"Exactly. It's been a while since we've had a good Dimensional Shot preparation drill," Lindy said, just as straight-faced. "Have to keep the crew on their toes, after all…"

….

There was chaos in Metropolis. Mobs were going around fighting, breaking and looting. Army units trying to attack the tower that had arisen were destroyed with contemptuous ease, despite the efforts of the local heroes who didn't have an S on their chest. Steel had his hands full, unable to go for the attack when it was all he could do to help keep people safe. Lois Lane was, as usual, only inches away from death, her only acknowledgement to how dire the situation was a pair of flats and a safety helmet. The kind that was 'shoot-my-head-off' orange. Few people saw the little white fox-cat thing going from lone little girl to little girl…

Above, J'onn, Batman and Diana stared down at the chaos. Many seemed to be _celebrating_ the chaos and horror, if the faint, joyful cries of "We're all doomed!" were anything to go by. Batman ignored it, focused on the tower some blocks away from them.

"Perhaps my sisters were right about mankind," Diana said. "They're nothing but untamed savages."

"Do not judge them too harshly," J'onn said, staring down, eyes slightly out of focus. "They act out of fear."

Batman was silent as he stood slightly to the side. Something caught this eye, and he silently jumped off the building, swinging down in time to kick a gun out of some pimply-teenager's hand as he leveled it at an old man. The old man ran as he descended, while the boy just screamed. Batman ignored him, taking the gun and disassembling it, taking out the firing pin and throwing the rest down a drain. That done, he sent a grapnel upwards, pulling himself back to the rooftop in time to hear J'onn ask, "Where is the Green Lantern that went with you?"

"Down there," Batman said, pointing at a slight green glow. "With the rest of the savages."

J'onn and Diana turned to look. Yuuno had just finished putting up a sign with a big arrow that read 'Run this way to get away from alien invaders'. Around him, small green constructs were shooting a foamy spray at small fires that had broken out. He stood on top of a green box that looked like it was made of wood, with the word 'mikan' on one side as he raise a small bullhorn to his mouth. "Everyone, please proceed in an orderly manner towards the indicated safe zones. We ask those who are able to assist the elderly and young children. No pushing, there's plenty of road to run away on to go around." He paused as a little boy ran up to him, crying and pointing at a burning building. He nodded and left the bullhorn floating there, repeating his message as he grabbed the boy and flew towards the building. After a hasty conference while the little green constructs began shooting foamy spray at the fire, Yuuno flew inside. A few moments later, he came out carring a bowl with a goldfish, a cage with some hamsters, a dog, a box of puppies, and a grandmother wrapped in a blanket. As he carefully put down the various pets, the little boy hugged his grandmother while Yuuno offered her a tank of oxygen.

"We're not all monsters, princess," Batman said as he threw the firing pin off the building. "Not all the time."

In the distance, a green light twinkled.

A few minutes later, Flash ran up the building. "Antarctica was awesome!" he cried, grinning widely. "We took penguin selfies! Wanna see?"

He was met with flat stares.

"Maybe later," he said breezily, looking around. "Hey, where's Supes and Hawkgirl?"

"Where's _your_ partner?" Diana asked.

Flash blinked, looking around. "She was right behind me, wasn't she?" he said.

J'onn looked over the edge of the building. "There," he said, pointing. They all looked.

Lots of little Green Lanterns were waving people away from the tower, catching looters and putting hats on them that said 'looter', while others put stolen items back to the stores where they'd come from. Others stood guard in front of apartments, broken windows and cars, while several more seemed to be gathering up people who were hurt and setting up a triage unit.

A few minutes later, Yuuno and Nanoha flew up to the roof, the latter smiling brightly as she put away her phone. "Mission accomplished!" she said happily. "How were things with you, Superman-sama?" There was a beat. "Hey, where's Superman?"

….

_Nanoha, calm down,_ Yuuno thought at her as he held back his partner with magic chains.

"How can I be calm?-!-?-!-?-!-?-!" Nanoha cried as she strained against the bonds. "Who knows what they could be doing to him in there! They could be brainwashing him again, or stealing his evolutionary rights, or forcing him to fight to the death to broadcast on TV, or infecting him with a leach-like parasite that turns him into one of the living dead, or stealing his life force in the name of their dark kingdom, or making him watch Twilight! They could be doing all sorts of horrible things to Superman!"

"And Hawkgirl too," Flash reminded her.

"Yes, her too!" Nanoha said belatedly. "We need to go in there and rescue him! Them!" she corrected herself.

"To do that, we need a plan," Batman said. "What do you intend to do, just charge in?"

"I'll scan for the nearest Kryptonian and Thanagarian life signs, put a shield around them, and blow up everything else!" Nanoha said.

Yuuno raised an eyebrow. "That's… a lot more violent than what you usually do," Yuuno said. "Aren't you going to try and talk to them, like usual? Make friends? Say what sad eyes they have? Shoot them in the face with Starlight Breaker?"

"_I don't aim for the face!"_

"She goes for the face?" Flash said.

"Only with the magic pink doom beams," Yuuno said.

"_I don't aim for the face!"_ Nanoha repeated. "We need to go and recue Superman! And that other person!"

"He's Superman," Flash said. "He should be all right. I mean, people have been trying to kill him for years, and he's still around. I'd be more worried about Hawkgirl. Last I checked, she's not bulletproof."

"No, Superman is very fragile!" Nanoha said in the face of years of evidence to the contrary. "He doesn't have mental protections! If they brainwash him and send him to attack the world again, it would be horrible." As looks of horror that came over Flash and Yuuno's faces, she added, "He'd feel so bad afterwards if he ended up hurting someone while he's like that!"

"I don't know him as well as you do, but I'm pretty sure you've got your priorities on backwards," Yuuno said, sweatdropping.

"Enough with the histrionics," Batman snapped. "If you're so intent on getting to him, then we need a plan to do just that."

"I can dismantle the whole tower and capture everyone inside in a bubble," Nanoha said. "That way they can't respond in time to hurt him. And Hawkgirl. People are always surprised when I dismantle whatever they're inside of."

Yuuno nodded knowingly. "She's right. They usually are."

"The tower doesn't have individual parts," Batman said. "It looks organic, like it was grown."

"Then I flay and filet the tower into pieces and trap everyone inside in bubbles!"" Nanoha declared. "Same result!"

"And the tripods?" Batman said.

"I launch them into the sun!" Nanoha declared.

"Okay, seriously, you're worrying me," Yuuno said. "This isn't like you. I mean, aren't you worried about the people inside? I mean, I know they're invaders and aliens, but that's never stopped from just putting the restraints on them and tossing them into… well, whatever we use as a jail." Yuuno frowned. "What _do_ we use as a jail?"

"Throw it into the sun?" Diana scoffed. "Surely you jest. Is such a thing even possible?"

"Yes," Yuuno, Nanoha and J'onn chorused.

Diana blinked. "Oh," she said. "Are you a great demigod? A daughter of Zeus perhaps, or Poseidon?"

"Who?" Nanoha asked, confused.

Batman was thoughtful, as if he was seriously considering Nanoha's suggestions. Finally, he said, "We can't be sure how much the invaders are holding the prisoners," he said. "For now, we shouldn't rely on methods so extreme."

Yuuno blinked. Wait, those methods were considered extreme on this planet too?

"Do you intend for us to skulk in like cowards as well?" Diana said.

….

Batman, Flash, J'onn and Green Lantern-chan flew in through a hole in the side of the tower as, behind, them, battle cries and explosions rang as Diana and Yuuno fought against the tripods. Yuuno was holding back to keep them distracted, since if they were completely destroyed the guards inside the tower might move to higher alert, but Diana had made no such promise.

"Well, she seems happy," Flash said as Diana's battle cry echoed behind them. "She _will_ be all right, won't she?"

"My partner's with her," Nanoha said. "And his expertise is shields and support. With Diana-san attacking and him keeping them from hurting her, it's only a matter of time. This way!"

"Are you sure?" Batman said.

"Hard to confuse Kryptonian life form readings with anything else," Nanoha said. "We need to hurry!"

They crept through the facility, Nanoha keeping them invisible from the occasional invaders that trooped past as the tower shook with the fighting outside. The insides of the tower was a maze, with lazily arcing tendril-pathways with no safety guards of any sort. It took a lot of effort for Nanoha to keep herself from leaving a ticket charging them with non-compliance with safety regulations. It all seemed very inefficient.

Eventually, the path they were on came to a dead end, and Nanoha's ring pointed straight at it.

"There are here," J'onn said, touching the wall, which seemed to swirl like a seashell seen form above. "I can sense them."

"Get back," Nanoha said as a door-sized cutting ring formed in front of her, its spinning teeth towards the wall. She pushed it forward, carving through the disgustingly organic barrier in front of her with slow deliberation as she tried to muffle the sound of the redecoration. "Keep an eye out. I don't know how long before I hit an alarm. "

Now that she was here, almost within ten feet of him, she was a little embarrassed at her almost hysterical reaction before. Blow everyone up? Really? What had she been thinking?-! All right, it was fun to do, but... Still, her concerns had been real. After all, the whole world depended on Superman to save them. Who could he depend on to save _him? _

Almost a year ago, she'd taken that duty upon herself. When she'd found him, standing like that on top of the Daily Planet, the city no longer willing to accept his help in rebuilding as it had before, when she'd seen the sadness in his eyes so strong that she had needed to tear her eyes away to give him a hug... she'd made it her duty. She wouldn't let that sad look come to his eyes again. It had been the same when she'd met Fate. So much loneliness...

Her cutting drill construct ate through the wall, pushing the cut-off part through a perfectly round hole into the cell beyond. There was still no alarm. In hindsight, that should have warned them.

Inside, Superman was encased from the legs down in... well, it looked like the same substance as the wall they're just drilled through. She was vaguely aware of the winged woman similarly encased next to him. Nanoha paid her little mind. The others could see to Hawkgirl. She rushed to Superman's side, alarmed. Even a cursory glance showed he was wan and pale, and she could hear his labored breathing. "What have they done to you?" she gasped, raising her ring even as she stepped forward, dropping her aura so she could feel his temperature…

Beneath them, the floor exploded with spouts shooting vivid yellow gas. It caught Nanoha completely by surprise as the gas was blown directly in her face. With one whiff, her throat burned as the whole world seemed to tilt sideway. Cold and darkness didn't so much as creep over her as hit her with a truck, and she knew no more…

On her finger, her ring flashed. _Attention, this is an automated message…_

…

**- To be continued...**

…

A/N: CLIFFHANGER! I'd say this is a decent size. It's already about three times larger than the same chapter in the last fic. Arc finale comes next chapter!

So, it's either a bromance or… well, you know.

Please review, C&C welcome. _**PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE TROPES PAGES!-!-!-!**_

Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.


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